RINHS invites the Rhode Island community to a special program honoring great naturalists of Rhode Island, Friday, March 28, 2008, 7:00 p.m.

Independence Hall Auditorium * Independence Hall
Upper College Road, URI, Kingston Campus

Featured speaker: Roland Clement, biologist, administrator, author, and artist, has been a giant in the ecological movement in New England and beyond for much of the last century. Clement will be describing great naturalists and landmarks of the environmental movement from his own first hand experience.

The lecture will be preceded by presentation of the 2008 Rhode Island Distinguished Naturalist Awards. These awards are given by the RINHS Board of Directors to individuals who excel in their studies of Rhode Island’s ecosystems and in their ability to communicate the knowledge and understanding to others.

The 2008 recipients are:
Rick Enser
Rick Enser led the RI Natural Heritage Program for nearly 30 years, during
which time he traversed the state’s every nook and amassed a huge practical
knowledge of its biota. Enser probably taught more natural history to more
people with fewer words than anybody in the history of RI but his low-key
manner does not preclude his having strong organizational instincts. Rick
was a leader of the RI Wild Plant Society and the RI Natural History Survey
and guided the Natural Heritage Program with strategic vision.

Ken Weber (posthumous award)
The late Ken Weber was a man who, to Rhode Islanders, needed no introduction;
virtually everyone had read his newspaper columns or used his outdoor
guides. In achieving a simple and approachable writing style, Weber showed
himself to be a true craftsman of the language, communicating the lovability
of our natural environs and their inhabitants with seeming effortlessness.
Weber died in August at age 63. Few other people have influenced so many to
learn about, to recreate in, to fight for, and most of all to love Rhode
Island’s natural world.
Read about previous recipients of the Distinguished Naturalist Award.

Golden Eye Award
A new award to be given annually to the person who submits the most significant
observation to RINHS for inclusion in our BORIIS biodiversity database. This year the award goes to Matt Ricker, the URI graduate student who reported the first observation of the invasive aquatic weed water chestnut in Rhode Island.

For more information: 401.874.5800 programadmin@rinhs.org
All lectures are free & open to the public. Doors open at 6:30p.m. Refreshments & fellowship following the program.

Independence Hall is located on Upper College Road on URI’s Kingston Campus. Coming north on Upper College Road from the light at Rt. 138, Independence Hall is on the right after the first stop sign. For parking, pass Independence Hall and turn right on to Fortin Road and right into the lot behind the URI Foundation building. Alternatively park in the lot behind the Fine Arts Center, on Bills Road, the first right after the URI Club. To get to Kingston, from the west follow Rt 138 to Kingston and turn left at the light onto Upper College Road; from the east and north follow Rt. 1 south to Rt. 138 and turn west then go to the second light and turn right onto Upper College Road.

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Have you ever blushed when telling someone you want to spend X dollars (where X is some large number) to control an invasive plant because of what it does to salamanders? I mean who ever even sees salamanders anyway. Well, the New Scientist recently had this news flash.

Currently wheat crops in East Africa and the Middle East are being hit hard by a new, virulent strain of an old pathogen, black stem rust (Puccinia graminis), known as Ug99. Given the limited genetic diversity of modern wheat strains, this fungus has the potential to greatly affect food production and result economic and humanitarian suffering. Turns out that the alternate host for Puccinia graminis, the one where the fungus undergoes its sexual reproductive stage, is our old invasive friend barberry (Berberis sp.). It’s not clear, at least not to me, what role naturalized barberry would really play in distributing and magnifying a Ug99 infection in the United States, but it can’t hurt. At any rate the broad distribution of barberry in the U.S. (see the USDA’s PLANTS website for a more or less complete barberry range map) will ensure that reproducing Ug99 organisms are crossed with the widest possible range of other rusts and get maximum opportunity to breed new and even more exotic versions of themselves.

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, it turns out that the highly pathogenic soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi H. Sydow & Sydow) winters on kudzu, which is one of original poster children of the invasive plant world. Read more: Soybean Rust and Kudzu. Actually, there are almost a hundred known hosts of Phakopsora pachyrhizi, including beans, peas, and clover, nonetheless, apparently few are themselves as resistant to the effects of the disease while allowing such profuse sporulation as kudzu.

So…there are a couple of good reasons to spend time, energy, and money preventing and controlling invasive species, reasons that involve more than “just” environmental damage. Because we (humans) are so vigorously stirring a globe-sized stew of species and genes, invasives can effect real human suffering and economic hardship, even if they’re growing off in the woods somewhere where no one but the salamanders can see them.

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Here’s an interesting tidbit:

local news updates

updated
Tuesday, 5:32 PM

From the City & Region staff at The Boston Globe

First wolf found in Mass. in 160 years

Email|Print| Text size – + March 4, 2008 03:03 PM

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

More than 160 years since hunters drove wolves out of Massachusetts, federal officials have confirmed finding a wild gray wolf in the state.

US Fish and Wildlife Service officials said today that genetic tests performed on an animal killed on a Shelburne farm in October, after it mauled more than a dozen sheep, showed that it was an eastern gray wolf.

“We have no indication that this wolf was ever held in captivity,” said Thomas J. Healy, special agent in charge of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast Region. “But what we don’t know about this wolf’s origins far outweighs what we do know.”

The confirmation is giving wildlife enthusiasts hope that the animal may one day reestablish itself in the forests of the Northeast. Wolves were aggressively hunted by farmers in the early 1800s until virtually none were left. The nearest established populations to New England are in Ontario and Quebec.

While the public often reports sighting wolves, most of those animals turn out to be coyotes or wolf-dog, wolf-coyote mixes, officials say. The last time a purebred wolf that did not live in captivity was found in New England was around 1992 in Maine.

The genetic tests on the 85-pound male were conducted by scientists at the wildlife service’s National Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Ore. Massachusetts and other wildlife biologists had previously said they doubted the wolf was a purebred.

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On Friday evening, March 28, 2008, RINHS will host Naturalist Roland Clement for Mark D. Gould Memorial Lecture Series on Rhode Island’s Fauna, Flora, Geology, and Ecosystems.

Clement has been a giant in the ecological movement in New England for much of the last century, and will be describing great naturalists and landmarks of the environmental movement from his own first hand experience.

Very appropriately, this special evening will also feature the presentation of the 2008 Rhode Island Distinguished Naturalist Award as well as the presentation of a new award, the “Golden Eye,” which will be given annually to the person who submits the most significant observation to RINHS for inclusion in our BORIIS biodiversity database.

The program begins at 7:00 P.M. in the new Independence Hall auditorium on Upper College Road, on URI’s Kingston Campus. The event includes a reception for Clement and the Distinguished Naturalist and Golden Eye award winners.

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