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ESLC

April 22, 2016

Happy Earth Day 2016!

Happy Earth Day! While it's pretty much Earth Day every day for all of us at Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and everyone else working for environmental groups and casues throughout the world, April 22nd does indeed serve as a unique opportunity to raise awareness about our natural environment and resources. Did you know that in addition to Earth Day, it's also National Environmental Education Week? It started last Sunday and runs through tomorrow, April 23rd. National Environmental Education Week encourages and celebrates environmental learning through events and projects across the country. Events are led by formal and informal educators from various disciplines and include participants aged 1-100. As you may already know, ESLC practices environmental education year-round through its Sassafras Environmental Education Center, or SEEC, at Turner's Creek in Kennedyville, MD (Kent County). At SEEC, a child can master paddling a canoe while learning about John Smith, local watermen, and estuarine ecology. Activities such as digging potatoes from the garden and delivering them to the Kent County Food Bank provides a lesson in community awareness, soil ecology, and empathy. We want every child to deeply appreciate the need to live compatibly in the natural environment. To help achieve that, each year our educators provide every 2nd- to 10th-grade KCPS student with outdoor experiences that build upon and supplement the Maryland Environmental Literacy standards they are mastering in the classroom. With the creation of our Shore Talks series, ESLC is now helping to provide an environmental education classroom for adults, too! By pairing experts from their respective fields with classrooms where they did not exist, residents can continue to learn about our Shore and the environment in which we must coexist with nature. Topics include oyster aquaculture, the health and history of the Chesapeake Bay, and the migration of Monarch Butterflies, among others. So, on this Earth Day, take a minute to

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December 18, 2015

LTE Regarding Talbot Comprehensive Plan

December 17, 2015 Letter to the Editor Comprehensive plans are extraordinarily important documents that can have great influence as to how an area changes. Talbot County is a truly special place that deserves the best possible update to its comprehensive plan; one that lays out clear growth strategies, recognizes the unique quality of life contained here, and inspires a new generation of residents to thrive. Eastern Shore Land Conservancy (ESLC) supports growth that adds vibrancy to our towns and villages, while preserving our rural landscapes. After spending 25 years headquartered in Queen Anne’s County, ESLC recently relocated to Easton and opened the Eastern Shore Conservation Center. This $7.6 million dollar historic rehabilitation project is not just a beautiful non-profit campus bringing dozens of full-time jobs to Talbot County; it is the type of positive growth that previous comprehensive plans have stated as goals to strive for. Talbot County does not deserve a comprehensive plan that is unclear, inconsistent, and leaves important decisions about growth to be made without clearer parameters or definitions. Concepts like “workforce housing” are great, as long as the “work” is near the housing and the infrastructure supports it. Before a final comprehensive plan adoption takes place, citizens should feel comfortable knowing they have a plan that takes their input into consideration and provides them with clarity in regards to growth-area specifics, sewer extension, quality of life issues, and traffic and safety concerns. The plan should reflect the integrity of previous plans while continuing to promote the qualities that have made Talbot County the beautiful and prosperous place it is today. Josh Hastings, Policy Manager Eastern Shore Land Conservancy

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August 28, 2015

Maintenance of Grass Buffers

Though I am now the Land Protection Specialist at Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, in a former life, I was a wildlife research technician and field crew leader for many bird related field studies and as fate would have it, many of those studies were on restored grasslands that were enrolled in Federal conservation programs such as CRP and CREP. During my time studying these grasslands, I noticed, with but few exceptions, that these grasslands were all mowed on or shortly after August 15th of each year. When considering the rules of these programs, this practice, by and large, is in keeping with the rules of the programs. However, when looking at the practice from a wildlife standpoint, the reasoning behind the early mowing is not particularly sound. In many areas of Maryland, grasslands are not the historic land cover, therefore it takes a certain amount of management to keep the areas meadow. The Federal program in general and the maintenance recommendations in MD specifically require that, once established, these areas must remain in herbaceous cover (grass and forbs) for the entire length of the contract (typically either 10 or 15 years). Prescribed fire, mowing and strip disking are a few of the recommended management techniques that are necessary to maintain these meadows as grasslands. There is no avoiding this reality. As well the programs require that noxious weeds be controlled by approved mechanical and/or chemical methods. Though the noxious weed treatments can largely be done at any time of the year, the general maintenance of the grasslands, including mowing and prescribed burns, are restricted to the non-nesting season for grassland and scrub-shrub bird species between August 15th and April 15th each year. This 8 month window is a fairly generous time-frame for management, but it only protects nesting birds from being

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June 25, 2015

“All Hands on Deck!”

This year, ESLC won $1,500 from the Chesapeake Bay Trust “All Hands on Deck” grant contest. Two Chesapeake Conservation Corps Volunteers are awarded this grant each year and awardees are asked to plan and implement a complete workday, comprised of activities that help to restore the Chesapeake Bay. This year, ESLC’s Corps Volunteer, Becca Weisberg, was awarded the All Hands Day to build bird boxes, a canoe rack, clean trails, and weed the BMP garden at the Sassafras Environmental Education Center in Kennedyville, MD along the Sassafras River and Turner’s Creek. The day was a great success, and the Conservancy and Education Center are thankful for the funding and materials that were provided by the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Additionally, this day would not have been possible without the 30 Chesapeake Conservation Corps Volunteers! Wayne Gilchrest, former U.S. Congressman and current ESLC Program Director for the Sassafras Environmental Education Center, kicked off the day with an inspiring talk. “Think about the change you can make” he told the Chesapeake Conservation Corps volunteers, each of who engage in environmental education and restoration work during their one-year terms. Volunteers worked throughout the day in groups to clear trails, clean beaches, build a canoe rack, and install bird boxes. Lunch was provided by Evergrain Café in Chestertown, MD. At the end of the day, volunteers were invited to enjoy the beautiful outdoor space and stay overnight for camping. The Sassafras Environmental Education Center shares over 1,000 acres of land with Maryland DNR, containing over 10 miles of trails, beautiful waterfront, and an abundance of outdoor recreational activities. ESLC invites the public to visit the Sassafras Environmental Education Center to view the work that was done during this “All Hands on Deck” day. Limited parking is available at the end of Turner’s Creek Rd. Visit ESLC.org to learn

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June 24, 2015

A moral responsibility

Pope Francis' call to action should spur us all to look at the effect of our consumer lifestyles. Last week the Vatican released Pope Francis' encyclical, the Church’s highest level of teaching, on the environment. Reaching far beyond one religion, Francis called on “every person living on this planet” to recognize the effects that two hundred years of industrialization have had on our environment. He accentuated the moral obligation we have to conserve our natural resources for future generations. The message of moral responsibility to our grandchildren and their grandchildren is one that has been downplayed by the environmental movement for the last twenty years. It was replaced by economic arguments demonstrating that protecting the environment and cutting greenhouse gases will have greater benefits to society than the sum of their dollar costs. These economic arguments arose out of a need to convince policymakers and CEO’s that going green can strengthen their bottom line. The roots of conservation and stewardship dating back to John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and Aldo Leopold, have a strong theme of using only what we need and protecting the rest for future generations. Before that, many of the Native American nations hewed to the Seven Generations principle that important decisions must honor those seven generations in the past and consider the well-being of those seven generations in the future. Today, thousands of backpackers and outdoor enthusiasts follow "Leave No Trace" practices when they are in nature. The Pope is calling for this sense of moral and personal responsibility to become common habits of our daily lifestyles. Francis is correct that today’s consumerism is devouring natural resources and creating waste at a rate that will leave our grandchildren with a planet our grandparents would scarcely recognize. He urges “Humanity [to] recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption”. What

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ESLC

Happy Earth Day 2016!

LTE Regarding Talbot Comprehensive Plan

Maintenance of Grass Buffers

“All Hands on Deck!”

A moral responsibility

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