Forests and Wildlife Reclaim US

choi

(1) Colin Nickerson, These Woods Are Lovely, Dark, and Back; New England's trees and wildlife are reclaiming land that had been chopped away since settlers first arrived. Boston Globe, Sept 1, 2013 (front page).
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro ... tZt09WvN/story.html

Quote:

"Today, 80 percent of New England is covered by forest or thick woods. That is a far cry from the mere 30 to 40 percent that remained forested in most parts of the region in the mid-1800s, after early waves of settlers got done with their vast logging, farming, and leveling operations. According to Harvard research [led by David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, the university’s 106-year-old center for forestry research whose scientists work in 3,500 acres of wooded tracts and laboratories headquartered in Petersham], New England is now the most heavily forested region in the United States

"In 1850, when only about 28 percent of the land in Massachusetts remained in forest, the population of New England was about 4.8 million. The region’s population has since tripled, to about 14.4 million. But even as cities and suburbs swelled, rural regions were abandoned — and nature famously abhors a vacuum.

"But after the Civil War, farms [in Eastern Seaboard including New England] were abandoned by the thousands as food production moved to the richer, flatter lands across the Appalachians. New England’s population contracted into villages and cities. More recently, industry clustered along rivers — textile mills, machine tool factories — suffered economic collapse.

Note:
(a) Do not forget to read or view the content to the right of online text which is boxed with a heading "Related."

(b) On the margin of the report in print are:

"[heading] As Forest Returns, So Do Its Inhabitants

"Pileated woodpecker[:] Hunted to scarity in Colonial times, the population ha trippled, spreading from a remnant concentration in the Berkshires to reach the Boston suburbs.

For the rest, read
http://www.boston.com/metro/2013 ... 4y0SwpZI/story.html
(i) Pileated Woodpecker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_Woodpecker
(ii) pileated (adj): "having a crest covering the pileum"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pileated
(iii) pileum (n; New Latin, from Latin pileus, pileum  felt cap):
"the top of the head of a bird from the bill to the nape"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pileum
(iv) Cooper's Hawk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hawk
(named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History (later the New York Academy of Sciences) in New York)

(c) The noun wildlife
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wildlife
, a collective noun, can be followed by either singular or plural verb.
(d) photo caption: "Swift River Valley in Petersham"
(i) Petersham, Massachusetts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersham,_Massachusetts
("Swift River Valley")
(A) Petersham. The Mohawk Trail Association, undated
http://www.mohawktrail.com/petersham.html
("Petersham received its present name at the caprice of the King's General Court. In petitioning for township status, the space for the name of the new town was left blank, and the court decided to name Petersham after a 'good Old English town'")
(B) William Henry Whitmore, An Essay on the Origin of the Names of Town in Massachusetts Settled Prior to AD 1775. Reprinted from Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society for 1872-3, Press of John Wilson and Son, 1873, at page 33
http://books.google.com/books?id ... 0origin&f=false
("170. Petersham, 1754. This is the second title of the Earls of Harrington. William Stanhope, Lord President of the Council, was, in 1742, made Viscount Petersham and Earl of Harrington. He was distinguished in political life, and died in 1756")
(C) William Stanhope, 1st Earl of Harrington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanhope,_1st_Earl_of_Harrington(c 1690-1756;
("Viscount Petersham (Surrey)")
(D) That refers to Petersham, Richmond, Surrey. See Richmond, London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_London
(Historically part of Surrey, it is now part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames)
(E) Petersham, London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersham,_London
(F) Mohawk Trail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Trail
("Today the Mohawk Trail is part of Massachusetts Route 2. It follows much of the original Indian trail, from Orange, Massachusetts to Williamstown, Massachusetts, for about 65 miles (105 km)")
(ii) Quabbin Valley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quabbin_Valley
(sometimes known as the Swift River Valley region, a reference to the Swift River, which was dammed to form the [Quabbin] reservoir ; section 2 Former towns)

So reforestation there may in fact be man-made.

(e)
(i) "the herring run on the Acushnet River in southeastern Massachusetts, for example, has rocketed from a few hundred fish to many thousands"

Acushnet River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acushnet_River
(ii) "An 1889 lithograph of Barton — a typical, if somewhat tattered, town in northeastern Vermont — shows hillsides shorn as close as a Marine’s haircut. From the village green to the craggy top of May Hill, woodlands sprout relatively sparsely among mile after square mile of open field and pasture."

Barton, Vermont
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton,_Vermont
(The [land] grant was to sixty Revolutionary War soldiers, mainly from Rhode Island and including Admiral John Paul Jones, General William Barton)
(iii) "'Owls are doing so well that nights can sound like a barred owl bar brawl'"

Barred Owl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_Owl
(native to North America)
(iv) "Some 222 species of birds breed in Massachusetts. The ones that require open grassland — bobolinks, meadowlarks, swifts, and swallows — are faring poorly with fewer meadows and crop fields."
(A) bobolink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobolink
(Males sing bright, bubbly songs in flight; these songs gave this species its common name)
(B) meadowlark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowlark

choi

(2) Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley, The Metropolitan Revolution; How cities and metros are fixing Oor broken politics and fragile Eeonomy. Brookings Institution Press, 2013
(Synopsis: Across the nation cities and metropolitan areas, and the networks of pragmatic leaders who govern them, are taking on the big issues that Washington won’t, or can’t, solve. * * * There are 388 metropolitan areas within the US, constituting 12% of US land, 66% of the total US population, and 75% of GDP)

My comment:
(a) I got the synopsis from Brookings Website. Most reviews, though, on this book says instead "the top 100 metropolitan areas" contribute exactly the the numbers.
(b) By itself, "66% of the total US population, and 75% of GDP"  is not surprising, because population size is proportionate to economic output--think GDP per capita.