Association to Preserve Cape Cod - this week... |
Bike Trail. Photo by Sue Machie |
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Back from the Edge by Andrew Gottlieb, APCC Executive Director |
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Okay, I’ll admit it, I feel better this week than I did on the eve of the mid-term election. Not great, but better. Better because the message for me is that just enough of my fellow Americans stared into the abyss of emerging extremism and said, “no thanks.” There are as many messages in this election as there are observers of the outcomes. In the decidedly mixed, very narrow, and somewhat contradictory results, I see a collective confrontation of the prospect of loss of democratic norms as we have come to know them. The result was that just enough voters turned away from the extremism driving the movement. It goes without saying that I think this is a good thing locally, nationally, and for the environment.
This is not to say that the deep divides defining society and politics have been resolved and that some new consensus has emerged. What has happened, in my view anyway, is that enough voters felt that threats to core small d democratic norms were real and that realization forced enough voters to protect them. It’s often true that not until something you inherently value is threatened will action be taken to protect it. We have seen that dynamic in place locally as a public consensus has emerged about the imperative to protect and restore our waters. We are inching our way toward that consensus nationally as the impacts of climate change become harder to ignore.
What we gave ourselves last week was a bit of a reprieve. What we do with it is up to us. While not exactly ready just yet jump into the election of 2024, I know that what happens next will be the collective expression of our individual voting decisions at the local, state, and federal levels. I hope you will be more motivated to participate politically in the next round of elections, having seen how important each vote is in maintaining the order and structure that is core to the America we think we are.
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APCC assumes formal oversight role in Pilgrim Nuclear decommissioning
APCC Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb was sworn in on Monday as a member of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. Appointed by Governor Baker to fill a seat intended to represent and protect the interests of Cape Cod, Andrew will focus his efforts to ensure that the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is completed expeditiously and that the decommissioning agent, Holtec LLC, is held to the highest standards of safety and environmental protection.
Check back here regularly for updates on the decommissioning process and APCC's efforts to ensure that Cape Cod Bay is not used by Holtec as a nuclear waste dumping ground. |
Take a survey to help Massachusetts site solar responsibly
Expanding renewable energy is a key strategy to addressing climate change. It also presents challenges - where are the best places to build new projects that provide maximum energy benefits, while protecting our ecosystems?
The Department of Energy Resources (DOER) is asking for your opinion on how best to site future solar projects November 18. This survey is your chance to encourage the state to prioritize grid-scale solar projects in already developed areas (like landfills, brownfields, and in highway cloverleafs) so we can protect our existing forests, farmlands, and wildlife habitat, which offer their own climate resilience strategies. A solar siting analysis by DOER found that almost 8,000 acres of forest and farmland were developed for ground-mounted solar between 2010-2019. Use your voice to change that pattern!
Take the survey! >>
Thank you to the Massachusetts Rivers Alliance for this content.
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SNEP Celebrates 2022 Grantees and Technical Assistance Recipients and APCC is one of them! |
The EPA SNEP, SWIG, and SNEP Network teams gathered with regional partners in two separate events over the past two weeks across Rhode Island and Massachusetts to celebrate recipients of SNEP's 2022 grants and technical assistance. This year, the SWIG program is awarding $1.9 million to 11 innovative projects throughout the SNEP region, while the SNEP Network will support the work of eight communities and a tribe working on stormwater and climate resilience priorities.
On October 27, SNEP and partners held a similar event in Brockton, MA to celebrate the Massachusetts recipients of SNEP local implementation grants and technical assistance. That event was held at Brockton Iron & Steel, a brownfield area within a community with environmental justice concerns. With SNEP support, the city will redevelop the area for mixed use and restore the floodplain and wetlands of Trout Brook, a tributary of the Taunton River, which flows through the site. Speakers at the event included Caleb White from the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Brockton Mayor Robert F. Sullivan, EPA Region 1 Administrator David Cash, Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection Regional Director Millie Garcia-Serrano, and State Rep. Michelle Dubois.
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Seeds in Motion
Almost all plants reproduce by seed. Plants employ various methods of dispersing their seeds. Moving the seeds to another location is necessary to give the new seedlings a good start where they will not compete with the parent plant. A seed must find adequate site conditions specific to the species, such as soil type, moisture regime and sunlight to ensure success of the next generation. The dispersal strategy may include wind or water. A seed may travel on the fur of an animal or may be eaten and moved to a new location before it is passed out of the gut of the bird or other wildlife. As one delves into the world of plants, there’s a seemingly elaborate calculation of factors and conditions that went into the evolutionary design and dispersal of seeds.
Seeds carried by the wind are lightweight and in the case of milkweed and dandelions, are outfitted with parachute-like attachments often called silk, coma, or floss. Female cottonwood poplars disperse their seed with a fluff called cotton that helps the seeds get carried away from the mother tree. In open landscapes like our coastal dunes, some seeds are easily blown and tumble freely to their germination destination.
For some plants that live along the water’s edge or within the water, it is the water that is responsible for moving their seeds. The buoyant rose hips of rugosa rose, whose native origin is China, have become naturalized thanks to water carrying them to another place along the coastal shoreline. The fluff of cattails imbedded with seeds float along the water’s surface until they reach a distant shoreline where they eventually sink into the wet substrate that they need to sprout. The seeds of pickerel weed, the emergent purple flowering spike on a pond edge, will gently flutter to the bottom of its watery habitat. The seeds of button bush, a shrub commonly found at a pond edge, float across the water to where, with luck, will end up in a suitable place to grow and alternatively might get picked up and transported in the feathers of a duck!
There are many terrestrial plant seeds with hooks, barbs, spines, or stiff hairs designed to stick to an animal’s fur and even our clothing to hitch a ride to distant places. George de Mestral was inspired by nature’s ingenious engineering when looking closely at burrs that stuck to his dog’s fur. The hook and loop design led him to invent “Velcro.” Seed dispersal can be explosive! When ripe and when pods dry, the capsules become unhinged and snap open and twist out of shape, projecting the seeds away from the mother plant. This is true of the native partridge pea, touch-me-nots or jewelweed, lupines, and witch hazel. Can you think of others? Seeds within fruit are meant to be eaten and deposited elsewhere after passing through the digestive system of animals. The stomach juices help soften the seeds protective coating and when expelled in the scat, are supplied with a dose of immediate fertilizer. Seeds dispersed by this means are taken to otherwise inaccessible areas of some distance.
An acorn, a nut containing a single seed, is mostly starch and protein, except for the tip of the acorn which is part of the seed embryo. From this, the acorn sprouts. As we know, acorns are a staple in the diet of squirrels who bury acorns for later meals. But if the acorns sprout, there’s no meal to be had, so a squirrel ensures its cache by biting off the tip of the acorn. But fortunately, they don’t get them all and some acorns germinate into oak trees.
Other seeds offer incentives. Ants are attracted to the seeds of violets, bloodroot, and celandine poppy because of a tasty piece of fatty substance called an elaiosome that is attached to the seed. Ants carry off the seeds to their nests where the fatty treat is fed to the young and then the seed is disposed of in the ants’ garbage heap, below the soil surface and full of nutrients. A perfect place for germination.
Seeds can sleep for years. Our soils can be amazing seed banks, holding years of seeds from plants long gone by, just waiting for an opportunity to grow. This was demonstrated in a recent project restoring the Coonamessett River in Falmouth. The river had been altered for cranberry bogs more than a century ago and had received annual applications of sand to keep the weeds down. Restoration included heavy equipment and the removal of the sand and excavation to reform the river channel to bring back the river’s natural flow. One would intuitively think that 39 plus acre ecosystem would require massive amounts of restorative planting. But Mother Nature brought her own contribution to the restoration project—an abundance of native plant species that came to life on their own when given back the habitat that favored them decades before. (You can visit the Coonamessett River; it has public spaces with trails and informative signage.)
The seeds of native plants are an important food source for birds. Goldfinches gorge themselves on seeds of evening primrose and seeds still held in dead blossoms of black-eyed Susan. Robins will be cleaning off the red berries of the native winterberry holly later this winter. Juniper berries (technically cones) will feed flocks of cedar waxwings and bluebirds. Birds are nourished by the seeds and the fruit. The seeds contained within the fruit will be distributed to ensure there will be more of these plants somewhere, that will continue to sustain bird generations to come.
What seeds do you have in your yard? If they are native species, don’t deadhead and toss. Instead, leave them to self-sow, leave them for hungry birds, and for winter garden interest. There’s life in those seeds!
Article by Kristin Andres, as published in the Cape Cod Chronicle. |
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For Teachers from the Wild Seed Project! |
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What do you see when you go outside? Photo by Sue Machie |
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Learn all about pollinators from the experts courtesy of Ohio University. Here is the last of the recorded in a series of webinars with Shana Byrd, of the Dawes Arboretum, Getting Started with Wildflower Patches, Flower Strips, and Meadows. You can find all of the webinars and transcripts here. |
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The Pollinator Pathway Cape Cod is a group of organizations promoting native plants and pollinator-friendly land care practices to create a load of safe oases for our native bees, butterflies and a whole host of other pollinators that are crucial to the health of our ecosystems. Join us! It's easy. There are no fees. You just need to pledge to ADD native plants, SUBTRACT a little lawn, AVOID yard chemicals, especially pesticides, and LEAVE the leaves. And, help us spread the word. If you wish, please get on the map to show your support of pollinators!
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Looking for a speaker? Check out APCC's Speakers Bureau.
APCC staff speak on a variety of topics and are available by Zoom. If interested, please contact the staff person directly to make arrangements. |
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The Jewels of Cape Cod ~ Our Freshwater Ponds |
Elbow Pond, Brewster. Photo by Sanford Zevon |
Pond Stories is a collection of writings and other media from Cape Codders and visitors who love the 890 local ponds that dot the Cape. We hope this collection of stories awakens your inner environmentalist to think deeper about our human impacts to these unique bodies of water. |
Send us your favorite pond photo, story, poem, video, artwork—we want to share with everyone why the Cape's ponds and lakes are so special! Email your pond connection to [email protected] |
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A Cape Cod Native Plant-finder ~ to help you choose the perfect native plant for your garden location. |
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Groundsel - Baccharis halimifolia |
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APCC Enewsletters. Our weekly newsletters will now be archived on our website and easily shared.
You can find past newsletters starting in July 2022 here.
Share this with your friends and they can sign up HERE. |
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Water Use Restrictions Posted in Your Town?
How about a rain barrel (or two) to harvest rainwater for your garden! |
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Rick & Joan's rain barrel |
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APCC Rain Barrel Program $99 includes delivery
to your door via FedEx. Upcycle Products repurposes food barrels, otherwise destined for the landfill, to make these rain barrels. Choose your color - gray, black, blue, or terracotta. For more information and to order online,
CLICK HERE. For a how-to-use video, check this out from Brewster Conservation Trust! |
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Are you thinking of going solar? We hope so! In partnership with SUNPOWER BY E2 SOLAR in Dennis, APCC receives $500 for every solar installation when APCC is named as referral.
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| Thank you to the homeowners who just contracted to install solar panels through E2 Solar. May the sun always shine for you! |
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| Every cup of coffee you drink could be supporting APCC's work and a local Cape Cod business.
But ONLY if it's Coastal Cape Blend from Cape Cod Coffee! Look for the new label. Order online. A portion of the proceeds for every bag of Coastal Cape Blend sold is donated to APCC. It's important to know that Cape Cod Coffee sources beans are Fair Trade & Rainforest Alliance certified, and grown without the use of pesticides. |
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Expressions Gallery, 578 Main Street, Chatham
CLICK HERE |
Ocean to Office. APCC has partnered with EXPRESSIONS, a fine art photography gallery located in Chatham center, to provide Cape businesses the opportunity to beautify their offices with coastal photography while directly supporting protection of our cherished environment. This special offering gives back to APCC. CLICK HERE to learn more. |
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Thank you to our business sponsors |
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