Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. It’s worth acknowledging all the positive changes that have been enacted over the last 50 years – the enacting the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, endangered species like the bald eagle have rebounded from the brink of extinction, rivers are no longer on fire and don’t run the color of whatever the upstream dye factory happens to be producing on a given day, and renewable energy options…
Rainy spring nights bring yellow spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) out of forested areas where they spend most of their adult lives and down to vernal pools to breed. Like many obligate vernal pool species, spotted salamanders cannot breed in most permanent ponds because fish would eat the salamander eggs and larvae. The fact that vernal pools dry out completely for at least part of the year means they cannot support fish populations and are therefore lack fish predators. On these…
Saturday, on a near 50-degree sunny morning, I joined a guided walk led by MassAudubon to explore the vernal pools at Ashumet Holly in Falmouth. A vernal pool is a unique temporary wetland that fills with water in the autumn or winter due to rainfall, snow melt and rising groundwater and remains ponded through the spring and sometimes into early summer. What makes vernal pools different from an ordinary pond is that vernal pools dry completely by the middle or…