VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT

Two “Cornish Stones” of Conservation

By Ryan Smith

Since the early 1970s, Dan and Rickey Poor of Cornish, N.H., have poured their hearts and souls into educating youth about science and stewardship and helping to protect land in their small Upper Valley town of nearly 2,000 people. It wasn’t long after Dan took a job as school principal in Cornish in 1973 that he and Rickey became Forest Society members and enrolled in the conservation camps led by then Education Director Les Clark. At camp, Dan and Rickey were introduced to Dave Allen, former state wildlife biologist, among many other natural resource professionals. The couple invited Dave to town to walk what is now the Cornish Recreation and Education Area, a property they helped to conserve, to discuss the ways Dan could incorporate nature studies into his school’s science curriculum. When Dan left his job to become a math and science teacher, he employed this curriculum in his teachings as well.

Rickey would incorporate her camp course work into her curriculum as an elementary classroom teacher for nearly 30 years. For Rickey, the course reinforced the importance of hands-on learning and the need to get students, both youth and adults, outside and in the field. In 1976, she was appointed to the Cornish Conservation Commission where she served as chair, in addition to many other positions, and currently serves as monitoring coordinator for the seven properties the town holds easements on.

Now, almost 50 years later, with countless hours of volunteering for many nonprofits under their belts, the Poors are still active. “For most of our years of membership, the Forest Society has been a resource and inspiration for us, but it has only been since our retirement ten years ago that we thought about volunteering, ” Dan says. In 2017, the couple brought their volunteer commitment to a higher level when they signed up to become land stewards for the 1,090-acre Yatsevitch Forest in Cornish and Plainfield. They took their passion for volunteering one step further in 2019 by enrolling as sugar maple research citizen scientists.

With little time to spare as they jump from one volunteer project to the next, in addition to traveling and celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary this year, the Poors carved out some time to reflect on their decades-long connection to conservation and discuss what’s next for this dynamic duo.

What are the responsibilities of a land steward?

Dan Poor: There is no such thing as a typical day as a land steward at the Yatsevitch Forest. The property is a bit off the beaten track and it includes a significant portion designated as an ecological reserve due to the presence of unusual and rare plants. Since there are no formal trailheads, kiosks, parking areas, or maps, it does not get a lot of visits from out of the area. That said, there is a snowmobile trail that runs through it, and some logging roads and old town roads also run through it or near its borders. And some residents have constructed trails on their own property that meet up with the logging roads and snowmobile trail.

Each year we drive the roads that border the forest looking for any obvious inappropriate activity, checking signage, and clearing brush when required. We usually check in with the current resident of the Yatsevitch house, too.

We are expected to walk boundary lines to check on blazes and corner markers, but I doubt that we will ever walk the entire boundary during our tenure as land stewards.

During the pandemic, I discovered that I could walk to a corner of the Yatsevitch Forest that was much closer to our house than I realized. I have since visited that area several times in the last 18 months or so and have walked a modest amount of the property border there. Although the boundaries I have seen are clearly blazed

From left, Yatsevitch Forest land stewards Dan and Rickey Poor pose beside the reservation’s road sign during a visit to monitor the property.

From left: Rickey and Dan prune overgrown vegetation near a Yatsevitch Forest property sign. Rickey (right) and Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest intern Nat Cleavitt assess the health of sugar maple seedlings as part of the Forest Society’s sugar maple study at Yatsevitch Forest.

and the corners are clearly tagged, I doubt some of the areas have been visited by any staff member since the Forest Society last visited and blazed them.

Also, the Forest Society leases a portion of the land to a local maple syrup operation, and we very occasionally check in on that use. There has been one timber harvest since we became land stewards. We returned the following spring to check on how things were left after the harvest was done. We will continue to do this from time to time.

How did you both decide to become land stewards?

DP: We knew Mike Yatsevitch well. He was on the school board that hired me, and he served as the select board’s representative to the town’s conservation commission, of which Rickey was a member. And we got to know his daughter over the years; she now lives in her father’s house, a small part of Mike’s original acreage that is not part of the Yatsevitch Forest. How could we duck the opportunity to help protect his legacy?

Rickey Poor: As monitoring chair of our conservation commission, I have walked the properties in Cornish where the town holds the easement and I appreciate the need for having a program for long-term monitoring. Becoming a land steward seemed like an ideal opportunity for the two of us to work together to help the Forest Society maintain such a record. And, as Dan said, we both knew Mike well, so there is a personal connection.

What's the most gratifying part about being a land steward?

DP: We are committed to the Forest Society’s goals of managing and preserving the land resources of the state. The Yatsevitch Forest is (I think) the largest area in Cornish under a permanent easement, but there are other significant tracts of land in town also under easement that provide a significant reserve for animals and plants. Although there are gaps of unprotected land between these parcels, much of it remains undeveloped. It is personally satisfying to be part of this effort.

RP: I would add it is a wonderful excuse to get out and walk a beautiful property.

What kind of work have you both been doing as sugar maple volunteers?

DP: Volunteering for the sugar maple study combined our curiosity of the subject with our interest in citizen science. We used to do sugaring in our backyard when our kids were young and now help a neighbor with their small, but far larger than what we used to do, sugaring operation.

In this project, we started by doing an initial inventory of sugar maple seedlings in each of the 12 plots located in the ecological reserve in the Yatsevitch Forest. We also took soil samples, inventoried all of the trees within a specified distance of the center of each plot, and recorded the plot’s slope and aspect. We have been back several times to check on the health and survival of the seedlings found in our initial visit. We also helped place 18 boxes (3 per site for half of the sites) that collect leaves, seeds, and other “stuff. ” We collect the contents of these boxes on a regular schedule in the spring and fall. The contents are then sorted, counted, and recorded.

What is the goal of the sugar maple project?

DP: This is a longitudinal study aimed at learning more about the conditions that influence the survival rate of sugar maple seedlings. It is being conducted by a Cornell scientist based at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. There are 5 sites involved in the study: Hubbard Brook and four Forest Society reservations in western New Hampshire ranging from the Monadnock area to near Bethlehem. I think the hope is that it will go on for several years, even decades. We were asked to commit to a minimum of 3 years. I doubt we will still be working on this project decades in the future, but we do have a few more years in us at least.

Ryan Smith is the communications manager and the editor of Forest Notes magazine for the Forest Society.