Washington Conservation Commission

Minutes – November 15, 2017

 

Assembly time: 7:00 PM

 

Members present: Arin Mills, Jed Schwartz, Doug Cook and Nan Schwartz.

Visitors: None

 

1.0    Approval of Minutes: October minutes, Jed made a motion to approve as written, Doug seconded the motion and all voted in favor.

 

2.0    Permits Committee  - No new permits. Nan said that she heard a complaint was made to DES on a Shoreland violation. When the complaint comes in the mail we will visit the site.

 

3.0   Committee and Board reports:

3.1   Land Protection Committee – No news, Jed hasn’t heard from Whit. He thinks we should hold a Land Protection Committee meeting in January. Nan will get a copy of the tax maps for us to use at meetings. Jed spoke about problems with the Porter’s deed as they are selling their property. He will keep us informed.

3.2   Energy Committee – Johanna that the EC members did a couple of Saturdays at the transfer station looking for signups. The recently had a phone meeting and they recently attended the Energy Conference that took place on local energy solutions. There was a good line up of workshops and venders. Arin asked about “NetZero” and said that the army and guard are doing this. Johanna said that you don’t have to be net zero but you can buy offsets to achieve a net zero of energy use.

She said it was reported that Washington and Freedom were the first towns with an Energy Committee. Johanna is the one that gets credit for starting the Energy Committee by petition at Town Meeting.

Arin said that she would like to have a table at Town Meeting and show our new maps, she would like to have the EC join us with info on their thermal camera project. Johanna said that Al tries to push the Selectmen in green directions but they don’t listen. Johanna thinks that she and Andrew should go in and talk with them.

 

At this point a big brown bat dropped into our meeting in the corner of the kitchen! We got him picked up and secured for the rest of the meeting. It was in a state of torpor and quietly waited in an open Tupperware container to be transported to Jed’s attic after the meeting was over. I am happy to say that once released in the attic the bat crawled up to a nook in the structure and appeard to be fine.

 

3.3   Planning Board – Nan said the PB is working on updates to the Land Use Ordinance, the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) and the Town Center Visioning.

3.4   Forestry Committee –Tom was not here to report. Arin want to encourage members of the FC to come to one of our meetings soon.

3.5   Legislative update  - No news.

 

4.0   Public Presentations and workshops:

4.1   Emerald Ash Borer presentation – The presentation happened on November 3rd, at Camp Morgan Lodge. Arin said we had a good turn out for Washington. Johanna asked for a copy of the PowerPoint, Arin will ask Dode. She said that Strafford County has been added to the quarantine area, so wood movement is restricted. She said that Dode suggested that you thin your Ash, taking the bigger ones and leaving some smaller trees.

        Arin would like to do another presentation in the spring. Someone suggested doing bats again. Doug suggested doing one on Moose. We will look at what the Forest Society is doing for the Cottrell-Baldwin Lecture Series at Fox State Forest and decide what to do.

4.2   Winter Hike - Arin wants to plan a snowshoe hike, either at the Camp Morgan loop or the East Washington trail for early February. We will plan it in January.

4.3   NHACC Annual Meeting and Conference  - Arin and Nan went to.the event on Nov. 4^th, Arin attended a workshop about easements, legal responsibilities, tax benefits and stewardship. She said eminent domain is the only way to break an easement. She also attended a workshop on bats, which touched on forest management for different species. Then she attended a session on Wetlands Rules changes and they spoke about the ARM fund for wetland mitigation and the suggestion that we come up with a Selectmen approved priority list of projects in case local mitigation funds became available.

        Nan said she attended a Wetlands protection and enforcement workshop, one about actions to protect natural resources in a changing climate and one on conservation planning and community engagement. They both thought the workshops were great.

 

5.0   New Business: None

 

6.0   Other Business:

6.1   NHACC dues for 2018 –Nan will give the invoice to Lynda for payment in January.      

6.2   Natural Resource Inventory Map updates – Arin and Nan are meeting with Chris in Concord on Friday afternoon at 3 to go over the map updates and talk about the co-occurence map.

6.3 Trails and Recreation Guide Booklet – Arin did some topo maps she will send to Nan. Nan did some research and got more information for the trails section.

6.4   Master Plan goals for 2017 – We are working on the NRI update and map update as our goal.

6.5   Barker easement – see 3.1

6.6       Tracking Invasive Plants project – Arin is drafting a letter to Patrice Roulx with suggestions for dealing with her invasive plants. The reporting sheets and guides are always available here: InvasiveProject.html

6.7 Arin said she talked to Shayne’s teacher about possible subjects for workshops with the school kids. She asked if we could meet with the teachers about their curriculum so we could tie in a presentation. They are happy to meet with us sometime and will let Arin know when. We discussed subjects such as studying water (Millen Pond), maybe measure PH and temperature or look for critters found there. The kids could note ice-in and ice-out on the pond. Other suggestions were studying birds and habitat. Doug suggested a trail camera behind the school to see what wildlife is there. He said some cameras would download to a phone making it easy to look at the pictures. We will keep thinking up ideas and meet with the teachers.

 

7.0   What’s Happening in Nature?

        Johanna reported her beavers have fixed up the old den and are attempting to clog up the smaller of her culverts. She said that she saw a pheasant in her yard and she saw a pileated woodpecker on Rte 10 in Marlow. She said she has seen deer on Rte. 202.

Arin saw a moose with a large rack on Faxon Hill Rd. and Shayne saw lots of turkeys and a grouse and pheasants.

Arin said she hasn’t had many birds at her feeder so far this year and wondered where they are.

Nan said she saw a Junco but they are ground feeders.

Jed said that it is a big mast year so there is a lot of natural food available, at least until it snows. Lots of pinecones this year.

Nan said their honeysuckle bush re-bloomed after being defoliated by caterpillars. She saw some flowers on the forsythia bush too. It was an extended warm period through October.

Arin noted the flood of October 28-29, Jed said he measured 9 inches of rain over 2 days. He said that last Friday, November 10^th it was 7 degrees in the morning.

Johanna said she heard foxes crying and thinks there was a coyote nearby.

Doug said he turned over a log on his property and found a spotted salamander, he replaced the log.

Nan found some interesting information about why we aren’t seeing birds at our feeders yet this year, to read about it click here: NewinNature.html

 

8.0   Correspondence: None

 

9.0   Adjourned at 8:30PM, our next scheduled meeting would be on December 20^th but we decided we won’t meet then unless we really need to or we could schedule something earlier in the month.. So the next scheduled meeting will be January 17^th, at 7PM at 54 Bear Hill Road.

 

Respectfully submitted,                       

Nan Schwartz, Secretary