We’re halfway through the summer and a lot has been going on at NCF! From turtles, beetles, bats, and birds, to rare plants, restoration, and salt marsh monitoring, the summer is a busy time for staff at the Foundation. Below is a quick look at some of the work that goes into conserving, maintaining, and managing NCF’s over 9000 acres of natural areas and habitats.
Wildlife
Right from the beginning of the summer, NCF’s wildlife ecology team are hard at work prepping for shorebird season and beginning to monitor spotted turtles at Windswept Bog as they come out of hibernation for the season. Just as Gracie Bell, our Wildlife Technician, set up fencing along Coatue and Eel Point, the shorebirds started arriving in droves and getting busy. Piping Plovers, Terns, American Oystercatchers, and many other shorebirds summer on Nantucket beaches where they create their nests and raise their young. Due to their status as a federally protected species, NCF is required to do all we can to ensure plovers have the space they need to lay eggs and fledge chicks. This is no small feat and our Wildlife Ecology staff including, Gracie, our Wildlife Research Ecologist Danielle O’Dell, and several seasonal staff, Collin Jackson, Meredith Broadus, and Jordan Gass, spend many hours tracking the success of the island’s shorebirds. Whether that means scouring the dunes for the small nests, trudging through mud and marshes to find young oystercatchers, or racing to band chicks before they fledge, our staff are out every day ensuring the protection of Nantucket’s shorebirds.
So far this summer, NCF staff have banded 26 American Oystercatcher chicks! Out of these 25, three were banded in coordination with Morgan Nelson, the Town’s Coastal Resource Coordinator, and another three were banded with the Trustees’ Shorebird Monitor. Almost all Oystercatcher chicks have fledged at this point in the season, but the team hopes to band the few remaining chicks soon. Over the years we have watched many Oystercatchers return to nest on Nantucket after spending their winters in Florida (like true Nantucket seasonals) or Central and South America. Banding is done under a federal permit to track the movement and survival of the chicks, and anyone who spots a banded American Oystercatcher can report the sighting to the American Oystercatcher Working Group.
Further inland is the former Windswept Cranberry Bog, off Polpis Road. NCF is in the process of converting this bog into a naturally functioning wetland to benefit harbor health and the many species that use the area. One such species of interest is the spotted turtle, a rare species of freshwater turtle. Only growing to about 5 inches, but able to live multiple decades, these small turtles spend their summers in shallow wetlands like those found at Windswept. To ensure the local population of spotted turtles is not harmed while the property undergoes this transformation, Danielle has been leading a project to monitor the turtle population. This involves setting traps for the turtles around the property, recording size, weight, age, and marking them to determine any recaptures. Jordan has been out checking these traps every day, often with Gracie or Meredith’s help. Sometimes they will attach radio transmitters to a turtle so they can continue to track its location throughout the rest of the year. This summer they have attached transmitters to a total of 8 turtles and will watch how they behave as water in the bogs dries up and the turtles are forced to move out into the surrounding wetlands.
We also can’t forget about a new scourge on Nantucket – the southern pine beetle. In Early July of 2023 Danielle discovered an infestation of southern pine beetles in a pitch pine forest at West Gate at Ram Pasture. Although these beetles are tiny, only 1/3 the size of a grain of rice, swarms of them can kill large swaths of forest. To stop the spread of this infestation to other parts of the island over 200 trees were cut down. This summer, staff from all departments at NCF have been monitoring pine stands across all NCF properties so we can act more quickly if any more outbreaks are found. While we have seen a few living beetles, so far none have caused any serious problems. We are continuing to spread awareness of this problem to island residents and visitors and any sightings should be reported to spb@nantucketconservation.org along with some images and a location of the affected tree.
For the rest of the summer the team will continue their work with turtles and birds, check in on the northern long-eared bats, remove invasive plants, and compile all the data from the summer.
Botany
As the summer growing season arrives, so do NCF’s Seasonal Botany/Ecology Field Assistants. Gabby Robinson and Spencer Kimble joined NCF in late May to help our Plant Research Ecologist/Botanist Kelly Omand with the many botany related tasks and plant research that come with the summer months. Right away they got to work with Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative’s collaborative group, the Invasive Plant Species Committee (IPSC). The IPSC gathers weekly to remove invasive plant species from areas around the island. Early on in the summer they pull garlic mustard before it flowers, then move on to Japanese knotweed and spotted knapweed. Gabby and Spencer went out each week to collect bags and bags of invasive plants to curb their spread around Nantucket. They also continued to remove invasive species including horned poppy, swallow-wort, Canada thistle, and velvet grass across several NCF properties.
At Head of the Plains, a large property sharing borders with Nantucket Land Bank land in the southwest portion of the island, the team conducted surveys of the rare sandplain blue-eyed grass. Sandplain blue-eyed grass is a staple species of sandplain grassland ecosystems. These systems are characterized by sandy soils in coastal areas and are dominated by grasses, interspersed with annual and perennial wildflowers. Hosting many rare plant species, sandplain grasslands are of particular interest to our botany team. They spent many days mapping individual sandplain blue-eyed grass plants to track their location, distribution, and phenology for this long-term project. Marking where these plants are, and the timing of their flowering/fruiting stages provides important data for the state on this rare species.
While the wildlife team has been working on their southern pine beetle infestation, the botany team has discovered a new problem afflicting trees on the island – Beech leaf disease. Beech leaf disease is a relatively new issue affecting different kinds of beech trees in the US. First seen in Ohio in 2012 and then spreading east, NCF has been on the lookout for the disease on Nantucket and unfortunately found it this year in beech trees at Squam Swamp. Discovered by Gabby, she and Spencer now have been surveying 27 beech stands across NCF properties to track the spread of the disease. At each stand they have collected data points on the understory shrub species composition, canopy composition, condition of the stand, and prevalence of beech bark disease (another disease affecting beeches in the area). So far, they have only found beech leaf disease at the one stand in Squam Swamp, and it is only just starting out; it hasn’t impacted the health of the trees yet. Unfortunately, there are no large-scale management treatments yet for the disease so for now we can only track the spread of the disease and spread awareness of the problem.
Looking forward to the rest of the summer, Gabby and Spencer will be spending a lot of time in the Middle Moors conducting transects to look at plant species composition in the area. They will also head over to Windswept to track slender blue-flag iris through the wetland restoration project.
Coastal
NCF’s coastal ecology team has been working this summer to monitor the health of the many salt marshes across our properties. Salt marshes are a crucial ecosystem for many species of fish, invertebrates, birds, plants, and are particularly vital for coastal adaptation to climate change and sea level rise. Salt marshes can be found on many of NCF’s properties including Coatue, Eel Point, the Haulover, and several sites in Polpis Harbor. Because of the importance of salt marshes, NCF’s Coastal Ecology Research Technician, Jisun Reiner, and Coleman Miller, NCF’s Graduate Research Assistant, have been spending much of their time running transects to monitor distribution of salt marsh plants, measuring water levels and turbidity, and trapping for the destructive purple marsh crab. Purple marsh crabs, while native to the island, have been causing dieback of marsh grasses by Medouie Creek. In order to curb the destruction caused by these crabs feeding on the grasses, the coastal ecology team has been trapping and removing crabs from the system to allow the marshes to begin to grow back. The project has been successful and they are seeing the re-growth of grasses in the affected areas.
It’s not only marsh health that is important to the team, but pond health as well. Jisun and Coleman are involved in a collaborative effort with several other conservation organizations and the Town of Nantucket to check for harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the ponds around Nantucket. Because NCF properties provide public access to Hummock Pond and Stump Pond it is important to make sure these ponds are safe to use and if not alert people to stay out of them. Each week Jisun and Coleman conduct visual checks of the ponds to see if there are any algal blooms. They also take samples of the water to send to staff at the Town’s Natural Resources Department so that it can be analyzed to learn what if any harmful algae are present. Before you jump into any ponds on Nantucket check the access point signs to see what activities will be safe.
NCF is proud to have created, in partnership with the Town’s Natural Resource Dept., Massachusetts’ very first intertidal oyster reef at Medouie. This oyster reef was created in 2021 as an experiment to see what benefits it might have to marsh and harbor health. Placed at the entrance to the Medouie salt marsh the goal was to have the reef provide a physical protection for the shore against wave action and filtering from the oysters leading to water quality benefits. We also expected that the reef would create additional habitat leading to an increase in biodiversity by the marsh entrance. NCF staff have continued to monitor the success of this reef and a few weeks ago conducted seine net sampling to measure the biodiversity. 15 different species were found at the reef site, while only 9 were found at a nearby control site, so it does appear that the site is providing habitat for a wider array of animals. The team will continue to conduct this research to see if the reef continues to provide this benefit.
As the summer progresses the coastal team will continue their efforts to track salt marsh and pond health around the island and in September, Dr. Jen Karberg, NCF’s Director of Research and Partnerships, will host a Climate Change Summit with co-lead Dr. Sarah Bois from the Linda Loring Nature Foundation.
Written by Isaac Hersh, Environmental Educator