On Wednesday, May 20, Citizens for Easton (CFE) held their annual meeting in the library’s community room. The organization, with a mission of preserving what makes Easton so special, namely its open space, rural character, and pristine watershed land, added two new board members to its leadership, Jessica Deutsch and Sophie Herbert Slater. Jessica, it’s worth noting, just started a local print newspaper, something Easton hasn’t had for quite some time. You can subscribe to get their in-depth coverage of local news here. Sophie has been tireless in her effort to ward off the proposed development of Saddle Ridge. After a unanimous vote to join the board and some brief words from the group’s president, Verne Gay, Peter Reid of Wildlife in Crisis (WIC) took the floor to present to a crowd of a few dozen Eastonites.
Wildlife in Crisis is an animal rehabilitation center located in Weston, close to the Nature Conservancy’s Devil’s Den Preserve. The center was founded in 1988 by Peter’s wife, Dara Reid, a wildlife biologist. There they take in more than 5,000 injured, orphaned, and displaced animals every year, including over 200 native species. In total, they have cared for more than 100,000 animals since they opened. The center gets no funding from the state of Connecticut and operates from donations. As private equity consolidates veterinary clinics into corporate chains, WIC’s services are more in demand than ever before. Caring for wild animals is not a profitable business model, and a fox with a fractured leg is not an appealing patient for a PE-owned clinic.
Peter could have spent an entire hour talking about baby bunnies and chimney swifts, but he didn’t. Most of the conversation was spent talking about land. Specifically, the conversion of wild habitat into suburban neighborhoods.
“Zoning plays a crucial role,” Peter said, and went on to explain how two- or three-acre lots create corridors that wildlife can actually move through. In Westport, for example, you’ll find the opposite type of development, with many smaller lots. “It’s like a maze for wildlife,” he said. Most animals can’t make it through the maze, they either avoid it entirely or they die in it.
This is where Easton, and Saddle Ridge specifically entered into the conversation, with 26 houses proposed for the 125-acre property. The new development would require blasting on a significant scale and the removal of thousands of cubic yards of material. “Basically terraforming,” as Peter put it. Those in attendance shared concerns over the impacts to groundwater and the watershed. Citizens for Easton’s position is not anti-development. But it is when the kind of development proposed threatens the watershed that half a million people rely on.
But habitat loss isn’t the only threat to Easton’s wildlife. Peter turned to a quieter, equally deadly danger: rodenticides. The small black plastic bait stations that you see outside restaurants, office buildings, and suburban garages contain second-generation anticoagulants. When mice eat the bait, they often die outside, leaving their carcass to poison nature’s food chain. Hawks, owls, foxes, and your neighborhood cats eat the mice, and suffer the consequences. Peter described a great horned owl that WIC had recently lost. “His liver was chock full of these mouse poison compounds,” Peter stated, as the center performed a necropsy.
Recently, Newtown’s Conservation Commission proposed and passed an Anticoagulant Rodenticide Policy on Municipal Properties. Easton’s commission and Energy and Environmental Task Force is also examining the town’s position on the issue. The pesticide lobby in Hartford is well-funded, said Peter, but local action is the lever that can move the needle.
Wildlife needs all the help it can get at this point. Peter went over some stark statistics; songbird populations are down 70 to 80 percent since the 1970s, Connecticut loses over 50 acres of forest per day, and feral cats kill around two billion birds a year nationally.
But the foundational message of the evening was simple and one that should anchor discussions over Saddle Ridge (or Plum Tree Lane) and whatever comes next: Once the land is gone, it’s gone forever. Peter explained the missions of WIC and CFE are intertwined. And he’s right. One organization patches up what the other tries to keep intact, with habitat acting as the common upstream variable. Everything else, the rehab clinic, the great horned owl, and the watershed that half a million people rely on, is downstream.
What can you do to help? It’s easy, pick up a copy of the Easton Observer and pay attention to the zoning battles. Donate to Wildlife in Crisis or Citizens for Easton, and keep rodenticides off your property.
More to come related to Citizens for Easton’s annual farm tour later this summer.
Wishing you a peaceful Memorial Day weekend.
The Cultural Easton 