The BEAT News | January 9, 2019

On Saturday, February 23rd we have three opportunities to learn. During the day, Sue will be running 2 different workshops (one at 9:30am and the other at 1pm) in Great Barrington. At 7pm in the Boland Theater at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Sue will present on her groundbreaking recent work in the Arctic: Animals of the North: How Will Climate Change Affect Them?

The next day, Sunday, February 24th, we’re really excited to partner with the Tamarack Hollow Nature and Cultural Center in Windsor for 2 more tracking workshops (again at 9:30am and 1pm).

Space is limited for each workshop so reserve early. Please join us for any of these exciting events next month!

FROM THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE | BY LARRY PARNASS

LENOX — When it comes time for eulogies to flow about the life of George L. “Gige” Darey, expect no shortage of anecdotes.

The colorful and adventurous Darey, who died Friday afternoon at the age of 90, was a masterful storyteller, whose passion for education and the outdoors ran deep in the Berkshires and straddled two centuries.

Darey died of congestive heart failure at home on Hubbard Street in his native Lenox, attended by his longtime partner, Virginia Akabane, as well as two cousins.

“I think he chose to die on the winter solstice,” said Akabane, who met Darey four decades ago through a bicycling club after Darey’s first marriage ended in divorce. “The solstice is the end of fall. In Lenox, it’s the end of the `Gige’ era, and the start of a new season.

“There will have to be a new institution that steps up,” she said.

Plans for a memorial service for Darey are incomplete.

For years, Darey, a teacher who grew up hunting and fishing, helped bring Massachusetts into the modern era when it comes to stewardship of fish and wildlife. Darey represented the Western Wildlife District on the state Fisheries and Wildlife Board for 38 years — all but three of them as chairman, stepping down in December 2016. In that time, he served under eight governors and worked with four directors of MassWildlife.

On Oct. 30, Darey became the 14th state resident to receive the Francis W. Sargent Conservation Award from the Fisheries and Wildlife Board, an act that honored Darey’s contributions to conservation and sports over many years. Sargent, a former Massachusetts governor, oversaw the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife from 1963 to 1964.

George Wislocki of Pittsfield, founding president of the Berkshires Natural Resources Council, said his longtime friend will be remembered for his leadership on the Fisheries and Wildlife Board, where he drove advances in conservation practice rooted in science.

“They’ve been leaders in the nation, taking on the task of protecting rare and endangered species,” Wislocki said of the program Darey helped shape. “Good people were attracted because of Gige’s determination that it would be a professional organization. It’s grown up to be what it should be. There’s no doubt that Gige really enjoyed being with scientists and professional people.”

Darey is believed to have gotten his lifelong nickname, “Gige,” from the way a French-speaking grandparent would pronounce his first name.

Wislocki added, “He was somebody whose company I enjoyed. He was a great storyteller.”

Akabane said she knows of a list a friend maintained of the distinct stories that her partner of 37 years was known to tell in regular rotation. The titles of the stories alone runs to two and a half pages.

“There are hundreds of George Darey stories,” she said, then couldn’t help but launch into one of them, about Darey’s school-boy revenge on a tattletale janitor involving a paper bag filled with water, a lisp and a principal’s empty threat.

Akabane said Darey grew up loving the outdoors and would go off rabbit hunting even before he was legally allowed to carry a rifle. He kept a rifle hidden in a tarp in a dead tree so he wouldn’t be seen carrying a gun around Lenox.

One story recounts the time he was spotted out hunting, at age 9 or 10, and a man tapped him on the shoulder. Expecting to be chastised, Darey instead heard the man say that the boy’s late father would be proud of him.

Darey’s work on behalf of conservation was recognized in 2004 when the Housatonic Valley Wildlife Management Area in Lenox, managed by the Fisheries and Wildlife Board, was renamed the George Darey Wildlife Management Area. Before that, his work on behalf of the environment was noted in 1996 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave him an award for his work.

Darey’s public service was extensive. He served on the board of the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, on Green Berkshires and with Sportsmen for Land Preservation. He was a founding member of the Housatonic River Initiative, the Massachusetts Outdoor Heritage Foundation and the Lenox Land Trust. He also served on the first Lenox Conservation Commission, and in that capacity joined the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions. He was also elected to the Lenox Select Board.

Akabane said Darey was at first dismissive of the Sargent Conservation Award he received this fall, as his health was faltering.

“When the day came, he was proud,” she said.

At the award ceremony, held at the Lenox Sportsmen’s Club, Michael Roche, vice president of the Fisheries and Wildlife Board, said he had worked with Darey since 1986.

“No individual I know has ever had a greater positive impact or contributed more to the natural resources of Massachusetts in so many critical ways,” Roche said.

“It has been a fun ride,” Darey told wildlife officials, when asked to help prepare a news release on his honor. “I have been even more fortunate to have worked with, and get to know, so many people and organizations with a passion for our environment.”

“I have been lucky to be involved for so many years with something I love,” he said.

GREAT BARRINGTON — Keep wilderness intact and stop the killing of them in the West. Then, maybe mountain lions will make a real comeback here, according to one expert.

Ecologist Susan Morse, who studied mountain lions for 20 years in the western states where they are established, says a true recovery of the species in the Northeast will require enough wild space for the big cats to have the privacy “to do what they do unmolested by people or livestock.” She says this would be a good thing, since the cats would control deer populations that are “ruinous for our woods.”

Morse, founder and director of Keeping Track, a Vermont-based nonprofit that trains people to record and monitor wildlife, says politically, restoring predators isn’t popular.

But with wild animals, change can also happen fast, she said.

“We all remember on Tuesday, when there were no moose in our area, and by Thursday, there were moose,” Morse said of the return of the species to Vermont. “I don’t shut the door on the future. It’s definitely happening — [mountain lions have] expanded their range.”

While state officials and experts like Morse agree that the mountain lion is not breeding in Massachusetts and has been deemed officially extinct in the Northeast, they know that some of the cats also known as panthers, cougars and pumas do travel east of their established range, and there is science-based evidence to support this.

In Massachusetts, three sightings between 1997 and 2016 have been confirmed by scat, DNA, or tracks, according to the Cougar Network, a nonprofit that studies the habitat and movements of the big cats.

The Network’s interactive map also shows confirmed sightings in Quebec, Maine, Connecticut and New York State.

Mountain Lion fever

Ever since a Monterey town official reported seeing one of the cats last month, reports of mountain lion sightings around the Berkshires over the years have continued to roll in.

People say they know what they saw.

“I have seen mountain lions twice in the Berkshires, both times in Egremont,” wrote Daniel DuVall, who saw the cats in 1990 and 2015. DuVall said he knows what a mountain lion looks like, since he used to raise them at the Catskill Game Farm, a privately owned zoo in New York state.

“My son and I definitely saw a mountain lion, no mistake, in West Stockbridge,” wrote Nancy Morandi of a sighting 15 years ago.

People writing to The Eagle say they’ve also seen them in Otis, Monterey, Sandisfield, Hinsdale and even crossing four lanes of traffic in Pittsfield.

“I was driving down Merrill Road in the middle of the day about 17 years ago … and a mountain lion ran right out in front of my car and three others,” wrote Beth Rose of Housatonic. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that it was a mountain lion. It was tawny, sleek and muscular and had a very long tail and was way bigger than a bobcat.”

Longtime Monterey-based naturalist Bonner McAllester has collected what she says are about five “ironclad, absolutely bona fide sightings” over the past couple of years, and noted that often people mistake a bobcat for it.

State wildlife officials say that seeing a mountain lion that has traveled this far east is unlikely but not impossible.

In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the animal extinct in the Northeast, their populations cut down by bounty hunters in the 19th century.

But it’s a question that also persists in other states, as people report seeing the large tawny cat outside its confirmed habitat. In 2015 researchers at the University of Minnesota and Southern Illinois University Carbondale found that since 1990, sightings to the east of the mountain lion’s established range had risen, with sharp increases between 2006 and 2014.

Eastward bound?

Morse, who is also an adviser to the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the “recovery of cougars to all of their former range east of the Rocky Mountains,” said there is evidence of long journeys east by male mountain lions to states like Missouri and Nebraska. But they’ll only settle down in an area if there are females around.

“It’s a known fact that mountain lions are trying to move to new habitats,” Morse said. “Whether or not they will succeed will depend on the ability of females to get here from the western states.”

When asked how females might make a comeback in the east, Morse said it depends on what goes on in the West, where mountain lions are killed for trophy mounts.

One hunting website says the cats are a prize catch, “The most elusive game in the Americas.”

“Stop killing them at the source,” Morse said. “This is not sane. This is America’s lion. This is it — this is our only big cat.”

The west affects the east

Mountain lion killings have risen in recent decades, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation, a Sacramento, Calif., nonprofit.

“More than twice as many mountain lions were killed from 1971 to 2010 than were killed during the previous seven decades by bounty hunters,” the organization’s website says.

In South Dakota, where mountain lions are established, one state official said that Morse is right that hunting females will reduce the chances the cats will settle down in the Northeast, since female cats don’t disperse as far as males.

But they will eventually get here, he said.

“Over time they will continue to move east provided they’re not extirpated and mismanaged,” said John Kanta, regional supervisor for the Wildlife Division within South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks. “Because it’s different what we’re doing now than what we did at the beginning of the last century when they were being poisoned and [killed] in an unregulated bounty system … a free-for-all.”

Kanta, who has tried cougar meat, and says it is “not bad if you can get past the fact that it’s a cat,” said the state has a harvest limit of 60, and that a harvest of 40 females will close the season early. He said the limits are rarely reached, and average around 30 — so far this season only six have been killed.

Even in South Dakota, people get worked up about this cat.

“When they see it in the paper it creates a kind of hysteria,” Kanta said.

Ken Miller, a Cougar Network co-founder who lives in Concord, said scientific confirmation will lend credence to sightings in the Berkshires.

And Miller also says it’s clear the big cat is eastward bound.

“It’s just a matter of time.”

Developers have not used wood for much other than houses since the horse-and-buggy days. But the knotty building material is making a comeback.

Seeking greener projects, which many consumers continue to embrace despite an anti-environmental mood in Washington, builders are choosing timber for offices, apartments and campus buildings, rather than the concrete and steel that dominated construction for decades.

Not everybody is on board with the trend, which is playing out from coast to coast. Concerns persist about wood’s flame resistance and strength, as well as its cost, which can be 30 percent more than traditional materials.

But proponents scored a huge win last month when the International Code Council, an influential advisory group in Washington, concluded that some wooden buildings could climb as high as 18 stories, more than twice the current permissible height, without compromising safety.

Consumers have already shown interest.

“The connections people have with wood cannot be underestimated,” said Tim Gokhman, the director of New Land Enterprises, which is behind two projects in Milwaukee that are mostly made of wood. One is a seven-story office building. The other is Ascent, a 201-unit luxury rental tower that, at 21 stories, would be the tallest timber building in the Western Hemisphere. Both await approvals — including permission to exceed height restrictions, which developers say will not pose any danger — but expect to break ground this year.

Unlike the production of concrete and steel, which generates huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the creation of lumber is a relatively low-pollution process, Mr. Gokhman said.

Trees are also an easily renewable resource, achieving nearly their full size in a decade, according to Jason Korb, an architect and a designer of both New Land projects. He added that the United States had some catching up to do, as wooden towers exist or are underway in Australia, Austria, Canada and Norway, among other places.

“It’s really starting to come into its own around the world right now,” Mr. Korb said.

For those who expect wooden buildings to resemble log cabins, the current crop may come as a surprise.

Most have metal or brick facades, a stipulation of building codes focused on fire restrictions, which means the buildings often do not stand out from the outside. Inside, though, gently striated lumber surfaces are on full display, as they are at Carbon12, an eight-story, 14-unit condominium in Portland, Ore., currently the country’s tallest wood structure.

In fact, there is so much exposed and unpainted wood, in columns, beams and ceilings, it gives the condos the appearance of a construction zone. Half the condos, which range from $800,000 to $1.3 million, have sold since the building opened last spring, said Ben Kaiser, the developer.

Mr. Kaiser faced challenges getting Carbon12 built. The permitting process took almost two years to wind through city and state agencies, largely because wood buildings in Oregon could top out at no more than six stories, he said.

In the end, officials concluded that wooden high-rises could help revive Oregon’s stagnant timber industry, Mr. Kaiser said. In August, the state increased the height limit to 18 stories.

Carbon12’s timber, however, did not come cheap, according to Mr. Kaiser, whose offices were also built with timber. Indeed, at $11 million, Carbon12 was about 20 percent more expensive to construct than a concrete version would have been, which in some ways dictated that it be a luxury condo.

“It’s like anything — the first iPhone, the first flat-screen TV,” Mr. Kaiser said. “Costs are high because not enough people are doing it.”

Nevertheless, he plans to use wood from now on. In addition to their green benefits, he said, wood buildings perform well in earthquakes because of their lighter weight and flexibility.

Proponents of wood must still overcome a longstanding bias. In the 1800s, fires were a scourge, prompting restrictions on wood. But steel is not infallible and can buckle in extreme heat, said John Peronto, a principal at the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti who is involved in the two Milwaukee projects.

“But we’ve gotten comfortable using steel and concrete products, so the question’s been, ‘Why would we change?’” he said.

Still, wood is not what it used to be. The decline in old-growth forests means developers can no longer count on huge single trunks to support floors. Instead, they rely on mass timber, an engineered product made of layers of spruce or fir pressed together in a way that is similar to plywood but with a more elegant look.

Nail-laminated timber fortifies T3, a three-year-old, seven-story office building in Minneapolis’s North Loop neighborhood. Eighty-two percent of the steel-clad building, whose name is shorthand for “timber, technology and transit,” is leased to tenants like Amazon, which occupies three floors. Asking rents are about $23 a square foot, said David Schreiber, a managing director at LaSalle Investment Management, the landlord.

Also leasing space there is Industrious, a co-working provider, which had to spend about 15 percent more than usual to add conference rooms and private offices to its floor, said Jamie Hodari, a company co-founder. Industrious had to route cables to avoid damaging the wood, he said.

But the investment appears worthwhile. T3 is far more popular among workers than Industrious’s other Minneapolis outpost, in a glassy modern high-rise, Mr. Hodari said.

“It’s almost like walking into a Swedish sauna,” he said. “It’s incredibly beautiful.”

Hines, the real estate investment firm that developed T3, took inspiration from a nearby office building it owns, which began life as a 19th-century warehouse. Despite robust demand, the brick-and-timber edifice had high turnover because it lacked contemporary finishes like soundproofing, said Steve Luthman, a Hines senior managing director. T3 kept its natural aesthetic, but Hines added touches like airtight windows and a modern heating system.

Hines is taking T3 nationwide to cities like Atlanta, where a seven-story, 250,000-square-foot offering, developed with Invesco Real Estate, will open in West Midtown this summer.

Denver and Chicago will get similar towers, which may be less expensive to construct than their predecessors. Wood remains expensive, but the assembly-line aspect of mass-timber production, in which factories make large panels, then assemble them on-site, saves time and labor costs.

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EUGENE, Ore. — A non-native insect that entered Oregon this fall on Christmas trees harvested in North Carolina has the potential to harm Oregon’s timber economy, officials say.

The elongate hemlock scale is less than a quarter-inch long and hides on the bottom of needles, where it feeds, Wyatt Williams of the Oregon Department of Forestry said.

About 8,000 Fraser fir trees from North Carolina came to the West Coast and were sold in large chain stores, the Register-Guard reported in a story on Friday. California officials discovered the insect after some shipments had already been sent to Oregon.

A white appearance on the bottom of needles means the tree might be infested, officials say.

The tiny insect attacks hemlock trees as well as evergreen trees native to Oregon, including Douglas fir and spruce trees. The insects cause trees to lose needles and become susceptible to other insects.

“Anytime we get an invasive species it is a concern because we don’t know how it will interact with our native environment and our native species,” said Danny Norlander of the Oregon Department of Forestry.

The main concern is the insects becoming established in the state. The trees shouldn’t be left outside, officials said. Instead, they should be cut up and the pieces put in garbage bags and thrown away.

“That way it is sealed up,” Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Jim Gersbach said. “So if there are eggs on there and they hatch, then (the insects) won’t be able to get anywhere.”