The following article is from the October 2001 issue of The Pileated Press, a publication of the Western Maine Audubon Society.
Conservation
Corner—The Mt. Blue/Tumbledown Project
by Pamela Prodan
Everyone is familiar with the fact that Tumbledown/Mt. Blue
region is a top-rate recreational area. Tumbledown Mountain, all
of which is privately owned, even appears on the website of the
Maine Office of Tourism alongside the great publicly owned hiking
destinations of Maine, including Acadia, Baxter State Park,
Grafton Notch State Park, Camden Hills State Park and Bigelow
Preserve. In addition to protecting traditional day hiking
opportunities, the proposed acquisitions would make a valuable
contribution to safeguarding the state’s natural heritage. I
am devoting this month’s column to an outline of some of the
lesser-known but equally impressive natural resource features
found on some of the project area lands. I hope that Audubon
Chapter members find the somewhat technical information of
value.
Intact and
Unfragmented Forest: According to the Maine Natural Areas
Program (MNAP), which conducted a limited ecological assessment
of the project area last year, the project area is within two
large blocks of contiguous forest communities that are
representative of separate ecological regions of Maine. One
60,000 acre block, including the project area’s Pope and
Hurricane Mountains, is the largest block within the Western
Foothills ecological region that is unfragmented by roads and
development. The other 80,000 acre block lies with the
Mahoosuc/Rangeley Lakes ecological region and includes the
popular recreational trails on Tumbledown, Little Jackson, and
Blueberry Mountains. The proposed addition of 3,360 acres in fee
ownership to Mt. Blue State Park will increase the acreage to
make it become the largest park in the State’s park system
with nearly 8,400 acres. An additional 4,310 acres immediately
adjacent to the State Park will be conveyed to a Maine-based,
certified forest products company. This land will be protected
with conservation easements that will prevent development and
division of the land while insuring traditional public access.
Several miles on both sides of East Brook, West Brook, Tumbledown
Brook and other perennial streams are found in the project area
and will be purchased in fee or protected by conservation
easements. Unfragmented forestlands and riparian zones provide
significant habitat for forest interior dependent wildlife
species.
Important Natural Communities and Plants: The MNAP has detailed the important natural resources found on some of the project area lands adjacent to Mt. Blue State Park. The Hedgehog Hill area, located to the south of the park, includes an unusually alkaline 25-acre Mixed Graminoid Shrub Marsh, a 180-acre deer wintering yard, as well as wading bird and waterfowl habitat along Fran Brook. Some of these lands and parts of Mt. Blue State Park have been proposed as potential ecological reserve. The Pope Mountain area, north of the Park, contains remnant stands of mature red spruce and a Spruce-Fir-Broom-moss forest.
Tumbledown and Little Jackson Mountains include exemplary natural
communities, including acidic summit, alpine ridge, krumholz,
prominent cliffs, talus and acidic cliff communities and high
elevation ponds. The mountain range is home to long-tailed shrew
and spring salamander. The slopes of Tumbledown also host a
population of the State listed rare plant species, Silvervine
(Paronychia auryocoma) and the MNAP has documented two other
species of Special Concern, Appalachian fir-clubmoss (Huperzia
Appalachiana) and Norther meadow-sweet (Spirea Septentrionalis)
in the Tumbledown area.
Bicknell’s thrush and Peregrine Falcon: According to biologists wikth the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS), which is monitoring the Northeast’s high-elevation songbirds, the Tumbledown/Little Jackson range includes habitat for Bicknell’s thrush that is significant for a number of reasons. VIN’s Bicknell’s thrush habitat model show the conifer-dominated forest above2,820 ft. elevation in the Tumbledown/Jackson range to be potentially suitable Bicknell’s thrush habitat. That amounts to 215ha (or 530 acres),about 90% of which is in the Little Jackson/Jackson Mountain crescent. While 215ha represents only about 1% of Maine’s potential Bicknell’s thrush habitat, there are two strong arguments for its significance. First, this is big enough to support multiple breeders on an annual basis and, second, it is a major component of the archipelago of high-elevation conifer forest that links the Mahoosucs with the Saddleback/Abraham region. Blueberry Mountain, also in this range, is a smaller, isolated peak that is likely to support occasional breeders. It is also significant that Maine’s Bicknell’s thrush habitat is underconserved, compared with New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where the Catskill Forest Preserve, the Adirondack Forest Preserve, and the Green and White Mountain National Forests offer a relatively high level of protection. The majority of Bicknell’s thrush habitat in Maine is on private land that is not managed for conservation values. Therefore, it is important to take advantage of this rare opportunity Maine has to transfer high-elevation forest to conservation-oriented stewardship.
The state endangered Peregrine falcon as been associated since the late 1980s with Tumbledown Mountain, which was used as a hacking site in 1987 and 1988. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has documented eleven years of residency on the mountain, with eight years of pair residency. Three nesting attempts have been successful and a total of five young birds have been fledged. The last year that a pair is known to have occupied the mountain is 1998. Tumbledown is one of only thirteen documented nesting sites in Maine and only of only nine that have successfully fledged young. Thus, the mountain is important in light of the falcon’s small population size, limited habit and distribution.
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