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The Paths Less Traveled: Trails, Views, and Hidden Gems
The swamp red maples have been tipped with color for a few weeks now, and the evenings are coming on faster than our summer-lulled minds want to believe. Fall is close at hand at Great Mountain Forest, bringing with it the promise of brisk hikes and bike trips under candy-colored foliage.
While GMF’s 30-plus miles of gravel roads and footpaths shine in all seasons, fall is the preferred time for those in search of cooler temperatures and vibrant views. GMF’s trail system, suitable for hiking, trail running, and cycling on some routes—and in the winter months, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing—has long been a treasured resource for residents of the Northwest Corner and beyond who wish to leave daily concerns in the parking lot and lose themselves in the woods for a few hours.
The Iron Man Trail and Stone Man Mountain
Stone Man Mountain is popular with hikers in autumn for sweeping foliage views, such as this one captured on October 12, 2022. The exposed summit is accessed from GMF’s Iron Trail via a 2.8 mile out-and-back hike. Photo: Tom Blagden.
The Iron Trail to Stone Man Mountain peak leads to an expansive view over the rolling peaks of Canaan Mountain and beyond. This is a rarity among the region’s mostly forested summits.
Though about half of the hike is on state-owned land, it is accessed from GMF’s Iron Trail entrance on Canaan Mountain Road just south of the intersection with Steep Road/Wangum Road. The roughly 2.8 mile out-and-back trail is of easy to moderate difficulty and takes between one and two hours.
“It’s challenging, but it’s a beautiful trail,” said trail runner and GMF Trustee John Nathanson. “The view from the top is the best.”
Nathanson has been running it since his family first visited the area in 2020. “The Iron Trail… has a lot of significance to me,” he said. “It was my introduction to Norfolk, my introduction to Mountain Road, and my introduction to the wildlife in the area.”
Nathanson still runs the trail regularly, and says it’s not only the sentimental value that keeps him coming back, but the feeling of the landscape’s history underfoot.
“It’s just interesting to think about the fact that you’re running through a forest that at some point ceased to exist,” Nathanson said. Once cut bare and stripped of its ecological value for charcoal and iron production, the now vibrant forest ecosystem is a result of GMF’s mission to create resilient and biodiverse community forests.
There are several rocky outcroppings along the trail to the summit of Stone Man Mountain offering views of the surrounding rolling hills, though hikers are advised to tread carefully as these stones host lichen populations that have taken decades to grow. Photo: Tom Blagden.
Gate to Gate
GMF’s classic gravel road trip runs from Camp Road at the East Gate in Norfolk through Chattleton Road and the West Gate in Falls Village. Cyclists can incorporate the 3.2 mile stretch into a larger loop connecting Canaan Mountain, Mountain, Westside, and Windrow roads to GMF’s Camp and Chattleton forest roads. The popular ride doubles as the route for the annual Tour de Forest gravel ride, held this year on October 17th.
The gate to gate route is commonly groomed for cross-country ski tracks in winter by Star Childs, a GMF founding member, trustee and forester. Some say that Great Mountain Forest has the best cross country skiing in Connecticut.
In the snowless months, the roads provide a pristine forest byway that passes some of GMF’s most popular sights, such as the charcoal hearth exhibit, several examples of old mill sites, experimental stands of conifers from around the globe hemming Chattleton Road and a lookout onto Old Man McMullen Pond.
In peak foliage, visitors may be lucky enough to see the pond scene close to how it appears in painter George Brown’s late-1950s “Coolwater Stag,” a pristine example of mid-20th century sporting art.
Renowned sporting artist George Brown considered “Coolwater Stag,” depicting an autumn scene at Old Man McMullen Pond, then called Great Mountain Pond, to be among his finest technical achievements. The painting was commissioned in the late 1950s by former GMF owner Edward “Ted” Childs.
GMF Trustee Jeremy Koch said a popular route is a round trip to the pond overlook from either side. “That’s just such a fantastic destination because the walk is the perfect distance from either gate,” he said.
Plus, “you don’t have to worry about ticks as much because you’re walking on gravel,” he added.
For those who want to add a little extra adventure to their stroll, the High Pocket Swamp Trail splits off from Chattleton Road about a half mile from the West Gate and reconnects at Potters Corners—an old farmstead.
Closer to the East Gate, hikers can enjoy a short loop on the Crossover Trail which connects Camp Road and the Crissey Trail and includes a scenic viewpoint over Crissey Pond.
Koch, also a cyclist, likes to add a bit more exertion to the Tour de Forest Route. “If I’m feeling really energetic,” he said, he coasts down Canaan Mountain Road to the valley below and climbs back up—about 650 feet of vertical gain in just under two miles— “just to prove that I can.”
In winter, David Beers, a state service forester with the Department of Energy and Environmental Conservation and the route-setter of the Tour de Forest, said his preferred way to see the forest is a ski loop that starts steep on the Crissey Trail from the East Gate and ends easy following Camp Road back to the parking the lot.
When the snowpack is good, Beers’s favorite spur off the main loop is the Crissey Ridge Trail up to the peak of Norfolk—“It’s slightly higher than Haystack Mountain and has a nice view in the winter.”
The Crissey Pond Overlook, accessed via the Crossover Trail, offers a welcome rest to skiers and snowshoers looking for a more adventurous outing than the wide and often groomed Camp Road. Photo: Tom Blagden
The Southern Wilds and Beyond
For the intrepid, a wilder and harder-to-access tract of forest featuring remote ponds, swamps, cliffs and streams awaits at the southern reaches of GMF’s 6,000-plus acres.
For those willing to hike (or bike) for it, GMF’s remote southern reaches provide a wilderness feel that many describe as more reminiscent of Maine or New Hampshire than Connecticut. Wapato Lookout, pictured above in May 2025, is among the most popular destinations of the area. Photo: Alec Linden
Bob Gilchrest, organizer of the Tour de Forest and an avid user of GMF’s trails, said that the forest “gives you that feeling of being up north”—like his favorite vacation spots in Maine or the Adirondacks—“but it’s kind of in your backyard.”
This wilderness can only be accessed by a long walk or a bike ride down the Number 4 Trail or Chattleton Road (which becomes a trail south of the Yale Camp). Using Chattleton Road requires fording Brown Brook where an old stone bridge has long been washed out, making for what Beers and Fairman both described as an interesting obstacle in some of their more adventurous cross-country ski outings.
Aside from the wilderness feel, the southern region features one of GMF’s most dramatic viewpoints. The Wapato Lookout, accessed via a short side trail that shoots off of the Number 4 Trail, peers out from a clifftop perch over the dark water of Wapato Pond.
“When I sit up there, I really feel like I’m up in Canada,” Gilchrest said, describing the spot as a “pocket that sits up high, cut off from civilization.”
“You look down,” he added, “and you can see the trail of moose in the water through the lily pads.”
A round trip from either gate—which can be done on foot or by bike—to the lookout approaches ten miles, so Koch and Gilchrest advised trekkers to plan for time and supplies accordingly.
Wapato Pond and the dense forest that surrounds it is a northwoods oasis tucked into GMF’s distant southern wilds. Photo: Tom Blagden
For those who have spent their whole lives in the forest, like Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson and Property Manager Russell Russ, their favorite places to pass the time may not be on the map—and they’re not upset about it.
“Some of my favorite spots are random little off trail spots that would be impossible to describe,” said Russ.
“We are happy taking the path less traveled,” said Bronson. As for his own spots, “It depends on the season, if I saw anything unique or if it is just a good place to be alone and sit on a stump.”
“The one honest answer I can give,” he said, “is that my favorite places are where no one else goes!”
The Classroom Under the Canopy
In early June, kindergarten through fourth grade students from Norfolk’s Botelle Elementary School left their desks and headed outdoors to Great Mountain Forest. Younger students, who had been studying ecology, took to the woods to flip logs in search of insects. The older group visited the forest’s weather station for a lesson on the impact of rain, snow, heat and cold on the environment.
“Anytime kids get to spend time outside, explore nature and then connect that experience with what they’re learning in the classroom is a win-win,” said Botelle Principal Lauren Valentino.
For the past two years, Great Mountain Forest Program Coordinator Vicki Nelson, a former science teacher, has been developing a field-based curriculum designed to complement and deepen the instruction students receive at school. Nelson, along with the educators who have brought their classes to Great Mountain Forest in the past, contend that experiential learning in the natural world brings students social, emotional and skill-building benefits that are harder to cultivate in the classroom. Plus, they say, outdoor learning is essential for student well-being in an increasingly digital age.
GMF as a forestry laboratory
GMF Program Coordinator Vicki Nelson, who spent 36 years teaching at Cornwall Consolidated School, is responsible for developing the curriculum and is still evolving it.
She focuses on the forest’s unique “riches” as assets to provide students with experiences they won’t find elsewhere.
“We have a sugar house, a weather station, and so many geologic features that are just mind-blowing,” she said. Currently, available modules cover topics such as ecology, dendrology, geology, biodiversity, and maple syruping, with many more in development.
Students from Cornwall Consolidated School beneath one of GMF’s massive glacial erratic boulders. Geology is one of several subjects visiting students explore through GMF’s K-12 programming.
Great Mountain Forest Trustee Lisa Bowden, who previously served as principal of Salisbury Central School and superintendent of Region One School District, is currently assistant executive director at EdAdvance, an education support organization for Northwest Connecticut. She is thrilled about the educational opportunities that GMF affords.
“The great thing about this forest is that it’s not just a nature preservation organization but a working conservation site, so kids can see the kinds of things the forest produces for human use,” she said. “And if we’re going to keep producing those good things, we have to protect the flora and fauna that live there.”
Bowden has seen firsthand how direct exposure to the natural world deepens students’ understanding of concepts like stewardship and earth systems, which can be abstract to children, she explained.
“They have to go out and see it,” she said. “They have to see how much care goes into a managed forest.”
Getting out of the classroom
Botelle School’s field trip was not a one-off, but the beginning of a strengthening partnership between two Norfolk neighbors, according to Principal Valentino.
“We’ve utilized Great Mountain Forest as an educational resource in a variety of ways in the past.” she said, “but I’m really enthusiastic about a collaboration that builds a tradition of experiences for our students.”
She noted trips to GMF and other outdoor learning sites provide a broader sense of place and community to students who don’t spend much time outdoors at home.
Debbie Tallon, a seasoned first and second grade teacher with 26 years at the school, cherishes opportunities to take her students outside. She finds that during GMF field trips, the students engage with the landscape, but also more with each other.
“I noticed that some of the kids who are my quieter learners are outgoing on the trip” she observed. “They kind of just came out of their shell.”
Elementary students are not the only beneficiaries of an education in GMF. On May 26, photography students from Torrington High School, Housatonic Valley Regional High School, and Northwest Regional High School for a masterclass in conservation photography from GMF’s celebrated Photographer-At-Large Tom Blagden, pictured center.
Kirsten Gray, a teacher at Cornwall Consolidated School who recently took first and second graders to GMF, connected storytelling to the ecosystem. Her students walked the Iron Trail while pausing to read chapters from a book about an oak tree’s role in a forest—just like the one around them.
“The setting encouraged curiosity, reflection, and connection in a way that felt meaningful and memorable,” she said
Teaching the Teachers
There can’t be forest education without forest educators, which is why GMF is hosting the inaugural “Teach the Teachers” retreat on August 14th through 16th.
The retreat is the brainchild of Audra Leach and Emily Picard, both former high school agricultural science teachers. Leach, the program administrator for the Northwest Conservation District, a state-mandated nonprofit that protects agriculture and natural resources, said the idea has been percolating between them for a decade. Picard currently serves as the U-Conn 4H Extension educator for Fairfield County, southwestern Connecticut’s chapter of the international youth development organization.
Co-hosted by the Northwest Conservation District, U-Conn 4H, and GMF, the weekend-long immersive conference will address what Leach and Picard have identified as a gap between educators and experts in outdoor education, whether it be safety, science, or just the logistics of getting a group of students into the field. “We just kept hearing the same thing,” Picard said— “We need resources in order to teach this.”
Leach explained that GMF’s status as a working forest gives it a compelling edge as a venue for experiential learning.
She said that the active forest use component gives GMF a “unique advantage” over other outdoor education centers in the region. It’s not only younger students, she explained, but also many adults who don’t understand the value of balancing forest conservation with sustainable use and management.
The upcoming retreat is intended for educators of all types to take away outdoor education skills and knowledge and an expanded forestry professional network back to their respective teaching spheres.
The retreat will feature a talk from acclaimed author and forester Ethan Tapper, which is free and open to the public, as well as a full weekend schedule of workshops and networking opportunities.
Register for the event here.
The Next Generation of Land Forest Stewards Take on Great Mountain Forest
Photo courtesy of Kate Regan-Loomis.
Will Watkins, Forester’s Assistant
My name is Will Watkins. I recently graduated from North Carolina State University in Raleigh with a bachelor’s degree in Forest Management. If you recognize my bio at all, it’s because I was an intern here at GMF last summer, and I loved it so much that I wanted to return. This summer I am filling a position as a forester’s assistant, supervising and working with the interns on most of their projects while also getting to go out and complete some individual tasks. One of the reasons that I wanted to come back to GMF was because of how diverse and large the forest is. Even though I was here an entire summer, I only touched the surface of what I could experience at GMF. So, I wanted to come back and discover all I missed and continue some of the work I ran out of time to finish.
In only the first week of being back, we hit the ground running, setting up trail cameras around the forest to monitor wildlife. We have also begun to take inventory of and mark out an old stand of white pine for a thinning. We are thinning to give more space to the best trees in the stand so that they can add more growth around the stem and to allow more light to reach the forest floor. Methods to choose which trees to keep standing and which to take out involve looking at how the spacing of each tree impacts the trees around it as well as the growth form of the trees.
Photo courtesy of Kate Regan-Loomis.
Finn Harris, Intern
My name is Finn Harris, and I am a rising senior at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. There are many aspects of my life that have drawn me to pursue a life in natural resources, but simply put, I have been an avid outdoorsman my entire life and absolutely love being in natural spaces. I often catch myself daydreaming about playing in the woods or in a stream when I’m stuck indoors for too long, so I decided to make my career outdoors.
Throughout my hunt for a summer job, I had been monitoring available positions in New England, as I am eager to learn about a different region of the country and how forestry is done outside of the southeast. Luckily, I was able to land a position on the Great Mountain Forest summer crew!
GMF’s work on forest resilience, supporting biodiversity, protection of watershed resources, and commitment to education and research is important, impactful, and represents ideals that I value deeply. I was further drawn to this position because of GMF’s commitment to exposing interns to lots of different projects and learning opportunities. Considering my future goals are rooted in establishing productive forests to foster ecosystem services and functions, I truly believe my time at GMF will be very meaningful and memorable.
Photo courtesy of Kate Regan-Loomis.
Tim Ostap, Intern
My name is Tim Ostap and I am a rising senior at the University of Vermont pursuing dual B.S. degrees in Forestry and Wildlife and Fisheries Biology. Outside the classroom, I serve as president of the UVM Birding Club and as a board member of the local Audubon chapter.
What draws me most to forestry is the intersection of wildlife conservation and land stewardship, particularly the way active management can benefit both the land and the species that depend on it. Forests are incredibly complex systems, and I am continually fascinated by how a forester’s decisions cascade across an entire ecosystem, shaping far more than just species composition. I have already been surprised by the tree, wildlife, and bird diversity that Great Mountain Forest stewards, and I look forward to discovering more.
I am so grateful to be here this summer. I am excited to contribute to the large-scale inventory plots, participate in the wide array of ongoing research projects, and mark my first silvicultural treatment. GMF offers exactly the kind of hands-on experience that makes everything learned in the classroom feel tangible, and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store.
Photo courtesy of Kate Regan-Loomis.
Serenity Zullo, Intern
My name is Serenity Zullo and I’m a student at Paul Smith’s College majoring in ecological forest management with a botany minor. I was born and raised in New York City, specifically the Bronx. I currently reside in western New York near Buffalo and Rochester but
visit the Hudson Valley region often. I always had a love for nature but didn’t grow up knowing about forestry. It wasn’t until I did a landscaping internship at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx that really solidified my love for the outdoors. My love for nature increased when I decided to go to Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks.
I’m currently finding a lot of interest in understory plant identification and management. I’d love to be able to understand a forest through what grows below it. I’m also interested in forest management with a wildlife thought process. I’ve picked up bird watching not too long ago and continued to wonder how forestry might impact specific birds.
I’m very excited to build upon my forestry knowledge and skills with Great Mountain Forest. I’m looking forward to tackling different projects including forest inventory, setting up trail cameras, and more! I’m also looking forward to increasing my knowledge of understory plants in the Great Mountain Forest. I’m thrilled to be working with GMF this summer.
The Forest as a Source of Artistic Inspiration
In addition to serving as a site for conservation science, a classroom for future forest stewards and an outdoor community resource, the ridges, swamps, ponds, and wooded slopes of Great Mountain Forest continue to inspire artists of many mediums.
Painter Wayne Jenkins
Among them is Wayne Jenkins, who started painting scenes from the forest more than 60 years ago.
“I’m always trying to observe something,” he said on a recent afternoon at his home in the north woods of Canaan, where some 25 of his original woodland and agrarian scenes adorn the walls.
Jenkins was hired by former GMF owner Edward “Ted” Childs in 1965 as a gardener when he was 21 years old. Jenkins spent over four decades working the GMF woodlands, boiling sap for syrup, cutting Christmas trees, harvesting cordwood, and—of course—painting.
A scene Jenkins painted in 1991 of a viewshed looking north from near Camps Pond, featuring some GMF cordwood. Jenkins acknowledged that the pair of grouse perched on the branch was a bit of creative license, as it would be an uncommon location to spot them.
Jenkins generally paints from photos taken in the field. He said the act of painting is a way to connect with the places and scenes he encounters in the woods and rural landscapes of the Northwest Corner: “Sometimes it just puts me back there.”
Jenkins recalled many such moments—beeches glowing in the late afternoon sun over Camps Pond, the “bark” of snow geese as they migrated south, or one time when he saw about 30 redstarts hopping about in a tree near a remote cabin. These snapshots of woodland—and agrarian, as he also loves cattle—life have been the basis of his art for six decades.
Sometimes, Jenkins’ subject matter is playful, but never strays far from real life. One small picture shows a bobcat licking its lips behind a grassy rise as an unwitting pheasant stands in the foreground. It would seem to be the product of a wry imagination if Jenkins didn’t have the photos to confirm the moment.
This encounter was no fantasy, Jenkins said, but a real scene he’d witnessed in his backyard. He didn’t see the result, but confirmed the pheasant wasn’t around much longer.
Jenkins’s art is displayed on walls both public and private throughout the region. Just this month, Jenkins reported that Norbrook Brewery, a popular agritourism destination just over the Colebrook town line, picked up two more of his pieces, bringing the brewpub’s total to three original Jenkins paintings. The North Canaan NBT Bank branch also hangs a work of his.
Reflecting on his many years painting landscapes, Jenkins also noted that as a nature-inspired artist, the work must change as the forest changes. These days, there are more bobcats and bears, while the ruffed grouse, one of his favorite subjects, he seldom sees.
Photographer Tom Blagden
Moose, like this proud bull, are the “holy grail” of GMF photography subjects, said Blagden.
Conservation photographer Tom Blagden is another artist both documenting and drawing inspiration from GMF’s landscapes and wildlife. “The photographic record can reveal a lot over time about how the landscape is changing,” he said during a recent interview.
Since returning to the Northwest Corner seven years ago, the Salisbury-reared artist—who himself comes from a family of landscape painters—has been donating his forest images to a growing archive of GMF photography that he hopes will be used “in perpetuity.”
“Moose are always the holy grail,” said Blagden of photographing the forest. GMF is home to approximately 20% of Connecticut’s 100 or so resident moose. Photo by Tom Blagden.
“Nature photography has a powerful ability to assign a higher sense of value to a place,” Blagden said, noting that beyond its function as a historic record, images can generate an emotional response that drives action. “We all are deluged with information and data and science,” he said, “but really, if we don’t feel that emotional connection, we’re not going to ultimately care about it as much.”
Blagden has published coffee table books of photos from landscapes including the dramatic Grand Canyon and Acadia National Park, but maintains that the quiet beauty of GMF offers a particular capacity for surprise.
“It’s a classic New England wilderness, which is inherently subtle and very intimate,” he said, “so that’s where the unpredictability and the discovery come in.”
Blagden grew up visiting GMF, which seemed to him a “wild and untrammeled” wilderness when he was a child and said that through his work, he connects to his younger, more innocent youth.
Beyond raising awareness for the natural world, Blagden aims to engage more deeply with nature on a personal level. “It’s not just visual,” he said, “it’s your body engaging with the terrain. It’s being tuned into the sounds and the smells.”
He suggested that many people could benefit from a similar practice of deepening their experience with the natural world.
“We’re at a point where we need to rewild ourselves in terms of engaging with the landscape,” he suggested, “and a place like Great Mountain Forest does exactly that.”
Watch out for these this time of year when hiking on GMF’s trails, especially after rainfall. The red eft, a terrestrial juvenile stage of the eastern newt, likes to sit still on damp trails. Photo by Tom Blagden.
Landscape Painter George Browne
Aside from the living artists, a number of creatives who have passed on have also contributed to the GMF cultural canon.
Among them was George Browne, a highly respected painter of game and hunting scenes in the mid 20th century. The son of adventurer and painter Belmore Browne, the younger Browne had an exciting career of his own. While enlisted during World War II, he was the first person to survive a 40,000 foot parachute jump without freezing to death. Later, he summited the 20,310 foot Denali in Alaska, a feat his father attempted multiple times but never achieved. To boot, he did it while lugging canvasses, paint, and easels, stopping to paint the rugged alpine scenery along the way.
In the 1950s, Browne and his family moved to Norfolk from the mountains of Alberta, Canada to be closer to the hub of sporting arts. Late in the decade, Ted Childs commissioned a piece from Browne, the final product of which, called “Coolwater Stag,” depicts a buck and doe wading at the water’s edge as wood ducks fly overhead against a backdrop tableau of autumn pastels.
In a correspondence dated to 1957, Browne, who had lived much of his life in the Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies, said he was thrilled at the proposition. “I think the forest growth around Norfolk is the most beautiful I have ever seen, certainly more varied and subtle than in the west,” he wrote in a letter preserved by the Browne Family Collection.
George Browne’s “Coolwater Stag,” showing an autumn scene at Old Man McMullen Pond, formerly known as Great Mountain Pond, was commissioned by former GMF owner Edward “Ted” Childs in the late 1950s.
He wrote again in February 1958 to announce that the painting was complete. “I do not feel that it is necessarily the best picture that I have ever painted, though I do feel that it is my greatest technical achievement to date,” he stated in the letter.
The next month, Browne was killed at the age of 40 by accidental gunfire from a companion while on an outing in the Adirondacks.
Poet David K. Leff
Pushcart Prize nominee and environmental official for the State of Connecticut, poet David K. Leff also served as a trustee of GMF and helped establish the original easement that continues to protect the forest today.
Like Jenkins’, Leff’s work demonstrates that patience, attention, and openness to one’s surroundings can yield deep rewards in a forest like ours.
Leff wrote in a yet-unpublished memoir of his time roaming GMF’s woodlands, urging forest-goers to truly take notice of what is all around:
“If the vocabulary of hills and watercourses, boulders, banks of sand and gravel, and scratches on ledges could be understood, perhaps the words of the owl that called to us earlier, or the grammar of forest ecosystems might be made intelligible and accessible. Reading the landscape opens a book of revelation.”
Leff passed away from a medical emergency in 2022 at the age of 67, but his words continue to inspire. He understood that communicating the mysteries of the forest is no easy task, but a good first step is to just stop, listen, and see what happens.
There are many ways to write about nature, which is why GMF is hosting the 2026 Writing Retreat to help forest writers hone their voice and translate awe and inspiration into effective prose that connects to a breadth of audiences. The program runs August 7-9 at the Yale Camp; sign up here.
The Understudied Understory: Spring Ephemerals and the Changing Forest
A walk in the woods in April can feel confusing. The twiggy canopy and leaf-brown forest floor look like November, while the bright sun seems to indicate summer has arrived.
During this brief window between snowmelt and foliage—while the bears are still groggy, the birds are returning from southern sojourns and the deciduous trees are still bare—the spring ephemerals make their appearance. Great Mountain Forest abounds with these woodland blooms, beloved by foresters, hikers and pollinators alike.
For all their familiar beauty, there’s much to be learned about how these species are responding to the various anthropogenic stressors impacting New England’s forests today.
“Herbs are so understudied as a whole,” said Dr. Marlyse Duguid, a forest ecologist with the Yale School of the Environment. “We’re just a very tree-centric field.”
The understory, she explained, “is where most of our vascular plant diversity is.” If you’re only looking at trees, or the “charismatic megaflora” as she called them, “you’re ignoring the vast majority of different species.”
What are spring ephemerals?
The term “spring ephemeral” is a quasi-scientific label given to herbs—a term botanists use to describe small, non-woody flora—that take advantage of the early-season sunlight that reaches the forest floor. “True” ephemerals are perennial flowers that complete their entire yearly cycle of blooming and dispersing seeds in the period before leaf out, usually a span of several weeks. Some species may only be in flower for a few days, while others (not so “true” ephemerals) may last past leaf out.
Bloodroot in blossom. Photo by Jody Bronson.
Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is one ephemeral that lives up to the label. The plant sometimes loses its petals less than three days after flowering in heavy rain, explained Deb Munson, an expert horticulturalist and neighbor of GMF’s West Gate on Canaan Mountain Road.
“But they’re incredibly beautiful and they have a very thick tuberous root that if you break it in half, it bleeds a reddish substance,” Munson said, noting that the substance is used by Indigenous tribes as a skin paint and dye for baskets.
Some of her other favorites to watch out for in the April woods are Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), the flowers of which “look like little Dutch pantaloons,” and spring beauty (Claytonia), which have white to pale pink petals streaked with vibrant pink.
The idiosyncratic namesake blossoms of Dutchman’s breeches. Photo by Jody Bronson.
Munson advised gardeners who wish to grow spring ephemerals to do so with a gentle touch—they like to be left wild. She also warned to never dig them out from the forest, but rather patronize a local garden center. Taking them from their natural environment is harmful to both the plants themselves and the broader ecosystem, she explained.
GMF Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson is also an ephemeral enthusiast, explaining that he fell in love with them the same way an early season pollinator might: “When anything shows up as a flower, especially when everything else is brown and gray and the green is not out yet, you’re going to be drawn to it—who wouldn’t be drawn to it?”
Bronson said that even after decades of logging blooms in Great Mountain Forest, the tiny, transient wildflowers can still surprise.
“A few years ago I was just doing one of my walkabouts, which I love to do,” Bronson recalled, when he stumbled upon a colony of rare yellow morph red trillium (Trillium erectum, also known as wake robin or red trillium). “I’m like, ‘what the hell am I looking at,’” he said. “It’s something you don’t see at all.”
A rare yellow morph of red trillium, found by GMF Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson. Photo by Jody Bronson
A meal for the early risers
While spring ephemerals make up only a small percentage of understory plants, they play a vital ecological role as the first species to green and flower each spring. Part of that role is serving breakfast for hungry over-winterers.
“They’re actually really important to a lot of organisms because they might be some of the first food sources they have,” explained Dr. Sara Kuebbing, a Yale School of the Environment ecologist and recent speaker for GMF’s Winter Lecture Series. Ants, rodents, pollinating insects, deer and more all take advantage of the early nutrition.
Ephemerals also act as nutrient stores for the ecosystem to access later in the year. Forest ecologist Dr. Martin Dovciak, a professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, explained that since they are active before other plants, they uptake and store some of the nutrients generated by microbial decomposition that may have otherwise been lost to snowmelt or rainfall runoff. “They prevent nutrients from leaving the system,” he explained.
Dovciak also pointed to a unique adaptation of skunk cabbage, the earliest wildflower to bloom in New England forests. “It has the ability to create its own heat through thermogenesis,” he explained, “and it can actually melt out through the snow.”
In doing so, it creates a more temperate microclimate and shelter—a warming hut for insects, of sorts. “And in the process they pollinate the plant, right?” said Dovciak.
Trout lilies are a favorite of GMF Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson. Photo by Jody Bronson.
Climate change, invasives, and deer – oh my!
But what happens if there isn’t any snow to melt?
Dovciak said that’s a question researchers are starting to ask about the complex implications of shorter, warmer, and less reliably snowy winters on early blooming plants and their interaction with the broader ecosystem.
“What are these plants going to do when they are robbed of that opportunity to create this unique microclimate that they depend on to attract those insects to pollinate them?” he said.
The effects of a changing climate, and the constellation of weather impacts it will bring, are complicated and multifaceted, Dovciak explained. For instance, with no snow cover, skunk cabbage also face early season over browsing by herbivores. “They can really just be mowed by the deer because they are some of the first kind of juicy, substantial material that shows up above the ground so early,” he said.
This uncertainty belongs to the field of phenology, which explores the annual seasonality of plants and animals in relation to climate. Dr. Kuebbing has been researching differential responses between understory wildflowers and trees to earlier spring seasons. She said evidence has indicated that trees are responding to the changing seasonal pattern more quickly than the ephemerals, meaning that leaf out is happening earlier, while wildflowers might not be making up the time on the other end of their flowering window. This amounts to a shorter above ground life cycle, which can put stress on the plants and deplete them over time.
There’s also the threat of mistimed flowering with ants waking up, which are responsible for the seed dispersal of many wildflower species. “There are lots of important questions about whether those interactions are disrupted because of warming,” Kuebbing said.
Invasive plants also may have the adaptive upper hand with a warming climate. Ephemerals are conservative in leafing out, Kuebbing explained—an energy storing tactic to account for New England’s once-common late season frosts. Many invasive species don’t have that same safety mechanism, and “they’re really capitalizing on the warming weather.”
They also capitalize on not being tasty to plant browsers. “The reason why they’re invasive is that deer don’t like to eat them,” said Dr. Jeffrey Ward, who was chief scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station from 2005-2022 and is a current GMF board member.
Spring ephemerals, on the other hand, are very appealing to a deer that has spent the winter digging for twigs under the snow.
Ward sees deer over browsing—and invasive plants, which he explained are a symptom of deer overpopulation—as the most immediate danger to understory plant populations in the Northeast. “Climate change, that’s going to happen over the scale of decades,” he said, but right now, we have a “real-time problem.”
To fence, or to hunt?
So what to do about deer? Many advocate for hunting, including Dovciak. “It’s great food actually—venison is really yummy.”
“I think we need to get more young people and women involved in hunting,” Deb Munson offered, noting that deer fencing, another method people use to protect plants, is prohibitively expensive. “Plus, it interferes with wildlife corridors,” she added.
Painted trillium (Trillium undulatum), an increasingly rare feature of Connecticut’s April forest floor. Photo by Jody Bronson.
Ward noted that while forests that allow hunting demonstrate noticeably greater wildflower and shrub populations, deer hunting is ultimately a policy issue. “Because you can’t sell [hunted deer meat], there’s really not an incentive to go out there and shoot even more deer,” he said.
Ward advocated for a type of fencing that uses slash from a forestry operation which has yielded encouraging results. “It was just unbelievable on the inside, just this explosion of plant diversity,” he recalled of one slash wall enclosure.
Dr. Duguid has been similarly impressed by slash wall projects she’s worked on—“I cannot believe the difference inside and out,” she said.
But, as Dovciak pointed out, “you can’t fence everything.”
Duguid agrees. She sees selective enclosing as a temporary solution to protect biodiversity as scientists address the bigger problem. “The deer are just out of control,” she said, “it’s definitely the biggest risk.”
Making Space: Encouraging Bat Habitat at Great Mountain Forest
Often maligned and feared, bats are actually helpful to humans and serve important ecological functions. Insect-eating bats make summer life more tolerable for people by consuming mosquitoes, black flies, and other nuisance insects and agricultural pests. Fruit-eating bats assist in the agricultural process by dispersing seeds, while other bats pollinate plants. Even without these ecological services, bats need support as the threat of disease and habitat loss caused by forest conversion grows.
In the past few decades, bat populations in the eastern United States have been devastated by an invasive fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Commonly known as white-nose syndrome for the distinctive white growth it leaves on their muzzles, this disease infects bats during hibernation, damaging their wings and disrupting critical physiological functions. Since its discovery in New York in 2006, populations of little brown bats, northern long-eared bats, and tri-colored bats have declined by more than 90%.
To support bat population growth and resiliency, Great Mountain Forest is working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)—an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture—to help create and promote bat habitat on the property.
During the summer, bats rely on roost trees, to raise their young, or “pups.” Ideal roost trees are characterized as large and having peeling or shaggy bark; however, bats also use standing dead trees with cavities to shelter their pups. In the fall, GMF staff began collaborating with NRCS staff and biologists to identify prime roost trees along GMF’s Iron Trail, marking them with blue dots.
With its shaggy bark, this ideal roosting tree has been identified according to NRCS guidance and GMF preliminary research. Photo by Kate Regan-Loomis.
This winter, to support these roost trees and prevent disruption to the bats’ roosting cycle, trees within a 15-foot radius of the marked trees were removed. By reducing competition from surrounding trees, the selected roost trees have more room to grow their canopies and access light and nutrients. This allows them to increase in size, develop more exfoliating bark, and remain healthy for longer.
Clearing smaller surrounding trees also allows more sunlight to warm the tree trunks, creating more comfortable roosting conditions for bats. Additionally, this work increases structural diversity in an otherwise relatively homogeneous forest, thereby developing more foraging opportunities for bats.
From left to right: Foresters Kate Regan-Loomis and Jody Bronson managing the forest and improving bat habitat. Photo by Kate Regan-Loomis.
The larger trees removed during this process are put to good use by GMF staff. Higher-quality logs are milled and used in current projects and future structures, while lower-quality wood is used for firewood to heat buildings and boil maple sap. Smaller trees and limbs are left in the forest, where they provide temporary shelter for wildlife and return nutrients to the soil as they decompose.
So while certain areas of GMF might look a little less tidy than usual, that apparent mess is creating more habitat for an endangered group of species, improving the health of large, old trees, and supporting the use of local wood by an organization dedicated to forest stewardship.
Balancing Tradition and Change with Maple Syrup Veteran Jody Bronson
Maple syruping is as synonymous with New England as Dunkin’ or the Patriots, but with much more history. Far from an heirloom, it’s a living, breathing practice, with sap-obsessed devotees across the region trudging through deep snow each year at the first hint of warmth in the hopes of a good yield.
GMF Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson is one such acolyte, and as he’ll tell you, turning sap to syrup is serious business – “You either go into it all the way or don’t do it at all.”
Bronson, with a lifetime of sap boiling under his belt, has helped keep the traditional spirit of syruping alive at GMF. Like many historic practices and customs that have survived, maple syrup production is suspended in the balance between old knowledge and new technology as the world – and climate – changes around it.
Bronson stepped back from his duties as GMF’s lead boiler this year, nearly fifty years after first joining GMF’s syruping team. Read on below for Bronson’s reflections on his own history with GMF’s staple forest product.
While many saphouses have turned to oil or propane to fuel operations, GMF still uses locally harvested wood. Photo: Jody Bronson
Sap season and climate change
Spring, while exalted for the colorful profusion of blossoms and greenery in its latter stage, is a highly phased season. There is the dreaded mud season, of course, the bane of many a hiker and low-clearance vehicle alike. But to those in the know, spring truly begins with sap season, when daytime temperatures climb above freezing and overnight lows remain cold.
As the climate warms, though, this window is getting shorter and coming earlier, which generally translates to a lower sap yield. Speaking on a late February day when the GMF crew was out tapping trees, Bronson said in the “old days” they would manage about 19 collections – days when the sap conditions align enough that sap flows and the team can harvest it – per season, but now they’re down to 12 or so.
Bronson had been out just days before with GMF Forester Kate Regan-Loomis and GMF Property Manager Russell Russ packing trails in the deep snow to make accessing the sugarbush easier. Bronson is efficient in the snowy forest – “Kate and Russell, they go, ‘Jody, you’re fast on snow shoes!’ And I’m laughing because I’m not fast at anything!
“I’ve been on snowshoes my whole life,” he eventually ceded. Still, snowy tapping sessions are growing infrequent as February snowpack becomes less reliable.
From left: Bronson, Forester Kate Regan-Loomis and Property Manager Russell Russ pack access trails to the sugarbush through deep snow in late February 2026. Photo: Kate Regan-Loomis.
A layer of snow on the forest floor is important in insulating the trees’ roots by delaying buds from sprouting. When buds are out, the sap collection season, which historically ran from late February into April, is essentially over. This winter, which Bronson described as an “old school Norfolk/Falls Village winter,” may bring collections back up, he said, but cautioned that the sap season is a fickle and unpredictable beast.
“When somebody says, ‘Well, how do you think the season is going to be?’ I always say I’ll tell you at the end of April,” Bronson said.
Tuning in to the season
Bronson’s sap wisdom is borne from a lifetime of experience. He grew up in Winchester Center, and started working at a small sugar house when he was nine or ten years old. He was mostly collecting sap in those early days, but he also got his first taste of boiling there. It was love at first sight, or perhaps, first scent, recalls Bronson. “You just love the smell of it.”
He joined the GMF team in 1976, and hasn’t missed a sap season since. Bronson also runs a syrup operation at home with his wife, whose own family in Quebec has deep roots in the tradition. His two daughters also know the trade and lend a hand at the sugarhouse when able. “It’s kind of a Bronson thing,” he said.
Bronson said that the process, which can be grueling, is more than just making a product – it’s a way to get in tune with the transition of seasons. “You’re outside, and noticing all the little details – the little changes,” he said. “It’s the promise of spring, the promise of everything starting to grow again and turn green.”
Local woodsman Wayne Jenkins played a key role in GMF’s syrup production from the mid 1960s to the mid 2000s. Photo: GMF Archives.
Keeping record
It’s the observational, meditative nature of collecting, boiling, and evaporating sap – and the process’s inextricable link to weather – that motivated GMF foresters in the 1940s to start keeping records, affectionately known by staff as the “Sap Journals.”
The journals are a log of the yield of each day of sap collection each season, as well as, crucially, the conditions that allowed – or didn’t allow – things to flow.
GMF forester Darrell Russ, who ran the GMF weather station for decades, was the first to build out the detailed reports, which Bronson largely took over in the 1990s.
Darrell Russ, longtime lead boiler at the GMF saphouse, tending to the evaporator. Photo: GMF Archives.
The resulting entries are snapshots of sap seasons of yore. One report from March 21, 1956 reads: “Cold & very snowy period. During past two weeks 54” (4 ½ feet) of snow have fallen! Temperature frequently below zero. Mar. 21 a.m. temp. 13. 3 ½ to 4 feet of snow on the level, collecting very difficult.”
Continued cold and snow delayed collection that season, but several weeks later, on April 10: “Perfect day, no wind, bright sun; temp. 45 after a good freeze 25. Deep snow; 1620 buckets, Record Run.”
Bronson maintains that while these records are useful in trying to piece together patterns from the chaos of sap season, they serve a further purpose in memorializing the days when syrup production was a more intimate, hands-on process.
“This is where I think all these old journal records are going to be important,” he said. “People just aren’t doing it that way anymore.”
The old and the new
Darrell Russ drives a team of horses as collectors pour buckets full of sap into a holding tank. Photo: GMF Archives.
Like many other industries, sap production is becoming increasingly automated. While sap makers once collected buckets hung on trees, sap now pours directly from the tap into a tube network that deposits the tree’s lifeblood directly into a storage tank. Some systems use vacuum to draw more sap to offset low harvests when nonideal conditions limit sap flow. Less time in the forest means less time to see the details of the changing season, Bronson said, as well as a more distant relationship with the trees themselves.
New evaporators are enclosed to collect steam for pre-heating the syrup, and reverse osmosis units — GMF had one of the original models back in the 1970s — have drastically improved syrup production efficiency. Before newer technology, boilers had to test the syrup with a hydrometer to gauge when it was ready, but that process is now automatic.
Bronson tests syrup density with a hydrometer. While modern equipment gauges when the syrup is ready automatically, syrup makers still run hydrometer tests daily to ensure the machine is accurate. Photo: Holly Jenkins.
“I definitely prefer the old traditional way,” Bronson said. “You can see the boil, you can smell the boil… you have to use all your senses to run an [old] evaporator.”
That’s where the value of the Sap Journals lies, he said – in keeping the old spirit of the work alive.
Still, he recognizes the value of new, efficient technology as the sap season becomes more unreliable. “Global warming has made the window for making syrup shorter,” he said, and new technologies allow syrup producers to maintain their craft. Reverse osmosis units, for instance, have allowed red maples, a much more common tree than the sugar maple in southern New England, to be used for syrup.
As Bronson will tell you, in maple syrup the only constant is change. True to that idiom is the changing of hands at the GMF saphouse after three and a half decades under his leadership. While he admits it’s difficult to cede his duties, he’s confident that the future of maple syrup at GMF is bright under the stewardship of Russell Russ, the son of Bronson’s own predecessor, alongside Regan-Loomis. Plus, he won’t be far in case a helping hand is needed.
“I’m passing it on to good hands,” assured Bronson.
What Happens When We Lose the American Beech?
Less than a decade ago, beech leaf disease was unknown to New England’s expansive beech canopies.
But now? “In Connecticut, every single beech tree has beech leaf disease,” said Elisabeth Ward, a forest ecologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES).
Ward is one of several researchers working on a long-term study in Great Mountain Forest – and across Connecticut – to gather data on this rapidly spreading pestilence in order to forecast what might happen to New England’s woodlands if – or rather when – the beeches are gone.
“This project isn’t about preserving existing beech,” said GMF Forester Kate Regan-Loomis, who helps coordinate and support research projects in the forest. “The question is how is the forest going to respond to beech leaf disease?”
“What is going to come back when the beech are gone? And how does our management affect that?”
Beech leaf disease, often referred to as BLD, was first detected in Ohio in 2012 and jumped to Connecticut in 2019. Caused by an invasive nematode – a microscopic worm – the disease infects the leaves, causing a noticeable “banding” effect, then crinkling the leaves as the disease progresses, ultimately defoliating the tree. Without leaves, the trees cannot photosynthesize, which means they cannot grow and will eventually die.
Ward, who coordinates Connecticut’s forest health program, a joint effort between the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said that BLD is an invasive disease that stands out even in New England’s increasingly-diseased woodlands.
“The northeastern U.S. has a long history with lots of different introductions of forest pest pathogens and diseases from around the world… but an invasive foliar nematode is not something we’ve seen before,” she explained. “Foliar” means that the pest targets the leaf.
“It’s just not something that’s ever been dealt with in terms of a forest health issue.”
This fact, along with the unprecedented speed with which the disease spreads, means that “scientific research hasn’t really been able to keep up with what to do,” Ward said.
Ward’s own work on BLD seeks to fill the gap formed between the disease’s swift takeover of northeastern forests and the relative lag of peer-reviewed scientific research. She is part of a collaborative, multi-discipline study using eight sets of large forest plots across Connecticut, including some nearly 70 year-old plots within GMF, to examine how beech trees of various age, size, and other variables are responding to the disease.
“We’re calling it a rapid assessment,” she explained, noting that the goal is to survey a large sample size “to get some really robust, good initial data about beech leaf disease and its impacts.”
Her work continues that of Jeffrey Ward (no relation), former chief scientist at CAES and GMF trustee, who began monitoring the GMF plots specifically for BLD when it landed in Connecticut. The project, which is ongoing, tracks 2,500 trees across the research sites, and so far, the scientists have found “pretty much complete stagnation of growth amongst all tree size classes,” she reported.
Interestingly, the researchers have not found a notable uptick in mortality in beech yet, but Ward warned that this isn’t cause to rejoice. Beech are clonal, meaning that in a stand, many stems are connected to the same root system. This enables healthier, larger trees to subsidize sicker ones for a time. When this reservoir runs out, though, possibly due to a co-stressor such as drought, “we’re going to see stand level die back,” Ward said.
While the situation is dire, Ward emphasized that much is still unknown. “We’re kind of limited by our lifetimes and what we see happening,” she said, noting that in Japan, where the nematode is suspected to have originated, beech have “completely co-evolved” with the nematode and live alongside it.
Regan-Loomis said that forest management can help play a role in giving the species a chance at survival: “Evolution is just luck… we can try to direct that in selecting management trees [to protect] that we hope have a good shot.”
Ward is working with GMF to explore another project that would test a potential treatment that could help preserve a sampling of healthier beech trees. Over the summer, she plans to test a phosphite bark spray at sites across the state including GMF. While not a landscape-scale solution – “I wouldn’t recommend spraying anything over the entire eastern United States” – it could save some trees, which is important, Ward explained:
“At least we’ll be doing something to preserve some beech genetic diversity across Connecticut rather than just waiting for them all to die.”
Other researchers are tackling BLD from other angles at GMF. Ecosystem ecologist Jonathan Gewirtzman, who just defended his PhD thesis at the Yale School of the Environment and is moving on to a post-doc at Stanford University, is part of the same collaborative, state-wide project that Ward is working on, but his focus is on what’s happening below the bark.
Researcher Jonathan Gewirtzman takes a core from a small beech to search for nutrient uptake. Photo by Kate Regan-Loomis
Gewirtzman studies non-structural carbohydrates – sugars and starches – in the outer part of infected beech trunks. In other words, he researches tree food. “Do these trees run out of sugar and die? Is that what’s going to lead to their mortality?”
He explained that his lab takes samples twice a year to get maximum and minimums, as trees build up stores throughout the leaf season to sustain them over the winter – “like a hibernating bear.” The research group expects results from the first batch of samples within the next several months.
Another upcoming project comes from Akshay Patel, a first-year Master’s student at the Yale School of the Environment. Patel is currently in the planning stages of a study on whether the disease can be accurately monitored using drone technology.
“In a lot of my research,” he said, “I’ve seen that a common pattern of diseases that run away from us is that we’re not able to keep a consistent and spatially explicit record of where they are.” He explained that more efficient tracking of the disease’s progress will aid forest managers and researchers in myriad ways as the scientific community deepens its understanding of this devastating pathogen.
Despite hints of progress, the story of New England’s beech trees is a sad one, and not just for humans, Regan-Loomis said. She noted that while the tree has often been regarded as a nuisance and of low-value among foresters, it provides vital nutrition for wildlife. “Beech nuts are important especially where there aren’t oak trees around,” she said. “It’s just a very useful, very fatty food for, like, everything, especially larger animals like deer and bear.”
“I always want to defend the beech,” emphasized Loomis.
Following the Forest GMF Style
Great Mountain Forest’s 6,300-acre expanse is, in a sense, one of Connecticut’s broadest highways. Save the rare maintenance vehicle or Sunday stroller, though, it is no conduit for humans, but rather the fast lane – or a rest stop – for the abundant flora and fauna of the New England woodlands.
That highway is not isolated to Norfolk and Falls Village. It is part of an ecological interstate that runs from the uplands of the lower Hudson Valley to the northern forests of Quebec. The Follow the Forest initiative, a collective effort between the Housatonic Valley Association, the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative, and many other regional groups, seeks to connect and protect this dark green thoroughfare, and GMF is a vital junction on a route that carries moose, bears, bobcats, salamanders, seed pods and beyond across an increasingly fragmented landscape.
The project recently received $30,000 in grant funding to further its mission, which combines citizen science, expert input, and regional partnerships to aid in wildlife mobility along a “corridor” that follows protected forests from the Hudson Highlands through the Berkshire and Taconic ranges before connecting with the Adirondack and Green Mountains and ultimately Canada.
Windrow Road approaching the GMF Visitor Center in early December. Even quiet roads like this can pose an obstruction to wildlife mobility between large forest cores. Photo by Alec Linden.
“Connectivity” is the concept of keeping “core” habitats bridged through “linkages” – sites where animals are able to traverse an anthropogenic boundary from one core to another. Many animals depend on mobility for vital reasons, such as seeking food or water or mating and reproduction, but the isolation of habitats from one another impacts humans downstream as well. According to the World Wildlife Fund, habitat fragmentation stemming from development has impacts beyond local ecosystem collapse, including degrading soil health and polluting fresh water.
Large and connected refuges of wildland that enable animals and plants to move freely are considered havens of “resilience” amid increasing pressures from climate change and development, which is an ecosystem’s ability to survive and thrive amidst disturbance. The corridor that runs up the highland spine from southern New York state to Canada connects an extensive swath of North America’s eastern woods, regarded to be the largest stretch of intact temperate mixed and deciduous forest in the world, according to Follow the Forest.
GMF’s territory makes up what the Follow the Forest initiative identifies as “core forest habitat” – a tract of protected woodland, 250 acres or greater, that is not disrupted by human alterations like roads or farmland. In addition to GMF’s conserved lands, thousands more acres of protected state-owned highland forest spread across the Canaan Mountain massif. Far exceeding the size qualification, the extensive, contiguous, and diverse forest contained within and directly abutting GMF’s boundaries is part of a “key stronghold” of climate resilience, according to HVA Conservation Director Julia Rogers.
During a recent interview, Rogers addressed the value in GMF’s longstanding commitment to conserving forestland. “Without that legacy,” she said, “I would predict that there is a strong likelihood that parts of [the forest] would be developed and we would have a much smaller core forest.”
Big cores, she explained, are fundamental as they are able to withstand disruption and damage more so than smaller tracts of land. “Larger cores are going to be more resilient to all the impacts of climate change,” she said, including more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, which may topple trees that have less protection.
Plus, GMF has elevation on its side: “As we think about species who are going to need to move either north or upward in elevation as a response to climate change, Great Mountain Forest is going to serve as a key climate refuge.”
“That connectivity with the protected lands further south and lower in elevation is so critical to Great Mountain Forest serving as a key part of the Follow the Forest initiative,” Rogers added.
The property lines of GMF, outlined in red, with the surrounding wildlife linkages to other core forest habitat demarcated by purple ovals. Shaded ovals indicate sites that have been assessed in person by a community scientist. Map courtesy of Stacy Deming/Housatonic Valley Association.
Not just a stronghold, GMF is also surrounded by linkages to other protected habitats. These sites, identified by purple ovals on the Follow the Forest map, were initially identified by computer modeling, but many have been visited by volunteer citizen scientists who contributed their own observations to the data pool.
Stacy Deming, HVA’s GIS manager who is behind Follow the Forest’s intricate and user-friendly story map, also joined the interview. She spoke with pride about the collaboration with locals. “I’d say we’ve really done a lot of work with community scientists to come up with these,” she said of the map tags detailing each linkage. “I feel like they’re a better display of what the linkages really are.”
Rogers echoed Deming’s sentiment: “What’s really cool about getting community scientists out there is that they have information that we can’t gather from a computer.” Plus, involvement begets interest, she said, noting that the project promotes engagement with the idea of wildlife connectivity as volunteers inspect these linkage sites firsthand.
Both Rogers and Deming agree that a communal approach to preserving connected wildlife corridors is essential in southern New England, a region abounding with roads, property lines, and town borders.
“None of us can do it alone,” said Rogers. “We need each other. And what’s fun about Follow the Forest is that it unites all of us under something that’s exciting, right?”
GMF’s Resident Moose are the Subject of Scientific and Photographic Study
Great Mountain Forest is home to 20 of Connecticut’s 100 or so moose. Yet most people who visit the forest will never spot one. That’s because despite their significant stature and status as New England’s largest land mammal, these ungainly ungulates—members of the order of hoofed mammals— move through the forest with remarkable stealth and agility.
Wildlife photographer Stephen Schumacher, however, who has been documenting GMF’s diverse fauna for eight years, has captured GMF’s resident moose on multiple occasions. And Ed Faison, senior ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, a regional conservation organization based in Redding, CT, has studied GMF moose to better understand how they impact temperate forests.
Under the Microscope
Faison, the lead author of a recent paper on the effect of moose and white-tailed deer in New England on forest regeneration, explains “Moose have been studied for decades in the boreal forest, in Canada and Scandinavia and Alaska. So a lot is known about what they do to forests up there, but very little is known about what’s going on down here [in the temperate forest].”
Moose are relative newcomers to Connecticut. In fact, there is no hard evidence to suggest that the species had a stable breeding population in the state until the 20th century.“GMF is a great study site because it’s one of the few spots in Connecticut with moose, it supports long-term research and is actively managed” explains Faison.
Faison along with Steve DeStefano from the United States Geological Survey Collaborative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Massachusetts spent 15 years monitoring the browsing (foraging) habits of moose and deer to determine their impacts on the abundance and composition of a re-growing forest in a disturbed woodland site, such as an area that had been cleared for timber harvesting. GMF proved an ideal study site.
A moose that eats up to forty or fifty pounds of food per day can certainly produce notable effects on the reemergent trees. Faison and DeStafano found that rather than restrict the forest’s ability to regrow, as prior scholarship had suggested, browsing’s primary impact was to direct different plant species to succeed in the disturbed environment, without substantial sacrifices to overall biomass or biodiversity.
The study, Resilience and Alternative Successional Trajectories in Temperate Forests Exposed to Two Large Herbivores published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management in June, concluded that the moose and deer did not significantly impact forest resiliency, or its ability to regrow after disturbance.
However, the scientists also concluded that the moose and deer’s feeding habits did affect the forest’s composition. The browsed sites showed markedly reduced deciduous tree growth. That’s because the animals favored deciduous species, allowing white pine (Pinus strobus) to grow more abundantly in the browsed stands.
Faison inspects a partially enclosed plot that excludes moose but permits deer. Photo provided.
Through the Camera’s Lens
Rather than their impacts on the forest, wildlife photographer Stephen Schumacher is interested in documenting the animals themselves, which is no easy feat.
Despite being New England’s largest land mammal, moose are seldom seen. And even though their antlers can span up to five feet across, these ungainly looking, yet agile animals manage to negotiate the dense understory with remarkable ease.
“I’ve seen moose going through mountain laurel that is thicker than thick,” remarked Schumacher during a recent conversation. “It’s hard enough for me to get through there.”
Yet Schumacher persists. “This is a lifelong project,” he says. “I still want to get my quintessential moose in early morning or late afternoon sun getting lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Not only does their reticent nature make moose encounters a challenge. But a moose that feels threatened can kick, charge or stomp, particularly a cow protecting her calf.
Schumacher’s dogged pursuit of moose has meant he’s had his share of run-ins with the woodlands giants, and the pictures to prove it. On August 27 this year, while riding his bike, Schumacher spotted a looming shape emerging from the edge of the woods. Jumping off his bike, and struggling to keep his hands steady as he prepped his camera for the shot, Schumacher uttered a low guttural sound to draw the huge bull’s gaze.
Normally, the photographer wouldn’t vocalize to the animals, but since this was before rutting season, he said the bull was calm. “His ears were up… he wasn’t posturing with his antlers. He was relaxed.”
To Schumacher’s amazement, the bull offered a reply. “He turned his head broadside, and he looked back at me, and he answered me back.”
“It sent chills up my spine,” he continued, after a pause.
“Seeing that bull, that’s probably the coolest thing I’ll ever encounter. And I’ve been able to photograph wolves out in Yellowstone,” he said.
Schumacher has been tromping around GMF’s hinterlands for eight years, and he also monitors a number of trail cameras he set up around the forest, which gives him rare access to documenting moose as well as other mammals in the wild. Once, five years ago, two deer walked by one of his cameras and for a split second, the outline of their antlers matched perfectly. “Those guys were actually twins,” Schumacher said with a grin. Schumacher’s cameras have also captured fishers, martins, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and “lots of bears—some giant bears.”
“I don’t take any of that for granted,” he said, emphasizing his gratitude to GMF staff for allowing him the access to do what he does. “It’s like getting a golden ticket in Willy Wonka.”
Despite his hands quaking with trepidation, Schumacher managed to capture a few images of a moose cow and her calf. Photo: Stephen Schumacher
Schumacher’s photographs and trail camera footage can be found on instagram @sds.wildlifeimages.
