Save for the years I spent on the East Stroudsburg State College campus, I’ve lived 64 years of my life in the Weissport, Lehighton and Ashfield areas.
I still feel Carbon County is my home. I once swam and fished in “Big Creek” (Pohopoco Creek), and now Beltzville Reservoir covers that area.
Blakeslee Boulevard at one time had five or six businesses, and at the same time, cultivated and fallow fields and woodlots filled the valley. The Lizard Creek Valley was once small farm after small farm. To the east and north the “White Oaks” dominated that part of the county.
Now, it disturbs me to see development after development gobbling up those pristine forests. I like the way it used to be. I enjoyed listening to whippoorwills in the evening, and grouse drumming in the forests at daybreak. Now, well, most are gone.
I’m a dinosaur, yes, but it has to stop sometime. Why not now?
I know there is going to be change. There are more people. They want a home to vacation at, or a home closer to nature. With more people comes the demand for more water and electricity. Power lines, pipelines, solar farms, wind farms and now, data centers.
I hope I am part of a large group of people who realize that we need to protect forested areas, protect crucial watersheds, keep corridors of unbroken forests, etc.
I thought I’d use this week’s column to print some photos of a fraction of the beauty and diversity this Times News coverage area has to offer.
Hopefully it will open the eyes of many of you and those elected community leaders who make these crucial forever decisions on preservation. Important decisions, not just for you and I, but for the generations that follow.
I hope you enjoy these photos, but keep in mind how many of these will decrease or disappear because we’ve taken away their habitats.
Test Your Outdoor knowledge: Which of these is not an invasive plant in our area? A. phragmites; B. Japanese stilt grass; C. Japanese knotweed; D. Japanese barberry; E. autumn (Russian) olive; F. all of these.
Last Week’s Trivia Answer: Look now as the leaves begin falling for small, shrubby trees called witch hazel, and notice their unusual yellow flowers blooming even after our first frosts.
Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com
Wood frogs, like this male, return to vernal (spring) pools to mate and lay their eggs. One proposed data center would destroy some of those areas. Vernal pools also naturally collect melting snow and allow it to slowly sink into the ground and to restore the water tables used by us for our water. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
I see beauty even in the rather common chipmunk. Loss of their habitat will adversely affect the numerous predator populations that rely on them as food. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Losing habitats means losing wildlife.
Red-tailed hawks are another of nature’s beauties. Red-tails require field areas and woodlot edges to feed, relying on mice, rabbits and chipmunks for food, and large forest trees to nest. How many habitat losses can we, and the red-tails, afford?
Black-throated green warblers are just one of our beautiful warblers. I, and other birders, have already noticed a decline in their numbers. Wind turbines atop ridgetops, along with less forested areas to rest and feed are certainly exacerbating their losses.
It’s hard to top the gorgeous colors of the red maple, one of the reasons our area is so popular for those wanting to live here. But the forest mammals (gray squirrels, white-tailed deer, chipmunks) all need them for their seeds and the browse they supply. It takes millions of red maples to keep the forest community healthy. It’s time to preserve the forests we still have.
One of nature’s wonders is the variety in the insect world. We too often overlook a field full of grasshoppers, forgetting that they feed kestrels, wild turkeys, toads, shrews and praying mantises. Meadows and fallow fields capture much carbon dioxide and offer feeding areas for the praying mantis with its beautiful compound eyes. Take along a hand lens the next week or two to get a close view of these insects.
Those same meadows allow common milkweed to flourish. They, of course, are critical to feeding the dwindling numbers of monarch butterflies, and the nectar is relished by this great spangled fritillary butterfly. We need to maintain biodiversity.
I would be remiss not to include the Eastern bluebird in a nature’s beauty column. They do best in pastures and meadows with a few scattered trees, and of course, properly placed nest boxes. We made bluebirds, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons priorities in our quest to restore their numbers. Let’s not take a step backward and lose vital habitat.
I photographed these brilliant cardinal flowers in late August. They grow in open areas beneath the forest canopies along clear mountain and pasture streams.
We have fewer and fewer cold freshwater streams because of human intrusions. Thousands of wells drop the water table, resulting in lower stream flows. But the opposite can happen with the removal of vital vegetation and then covering the land in rooftops, concrete and blacktop. By my calculations, the proposed data center complex in Lower Towamensing Township would have over 105 acres under roof. If we have 1 inch of rain, 3,240,00 gallons of water would not soak in. And, even worse, flash flooding would degrade the streams, damage downstream properties and destroy streamside habitats.
There is beauty in the American robin, too. They can be found almost anywhere, and have adapted incredibly well to manicured lawns, city parks and even the forests of the Poconos. Let’s preserve and protect vital habitats.
Coopers hawks are adapted with shorter, more compact wings for their darting flights in the forests pursuing songbirds. They also rely on our forests for nesting and feeding.
Grasslands and wetlands are the habitats shrinking the most. Construction projects must include studies of the impacts when wetlands are destroyed, and splendid nature’s ebony jewelwings may be affected significantly.