Category: Connecticut

Into the Field

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Connecticut archaeologists are moving from archival research to excavation in an effort to delineate the boundaries of the battle of Pequot Hill and other sites:

McBride and his team of researchers are working with a grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program, which seeks to document and preserve battlefields from early American history. They are also using funding from the tribe, which is hoping to use the endeavor as an opportunity to learn about colonial and Native American life at the time of the Pequot War, which lasted from 1636 to 1638.

The Pequots’ use of their Foxwoods revenue to embrace archaeology is admirable — unlike certain tribes and certain governments who fight tooth and claw to obscure the story of mankind in America.

Ghost Town Gallimaufry

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The plan to sell Long Beach West to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is officially DOA:

“Unfortunately, due to an unprecedented decline in the real estate market and poor planning by previous town officials, the sale of Long Beach West for the $10 million price approved by the voters is no longer viable,” [Stratford mayor] Harkins said Thursday. “TPL has proposed termination of the agreement, and in light of these developments, I believe it is in the best interest of the town to explore other options of preserving and protecting this environmental treasure.

“As it stands today, the $10 million purchase price will never be certified by the federal government, who would have ultimately bought the property from the Trust for Public Land. If the agreement as it is currently written were to be executed, the Town of Stratford would be forced to accept a sales price that is far less than initially anticipated.”

TPL has no one to blame but themselves. If they had been more transparent and presented the townspeople with a realistic price tag in 2008, the voters probably would have still passed the referendum and the deal could have gone through.

In an open letter to his constituents, Harkins described learning the details behind the agreement: “I felt as though I was watching Chernobyl melting down.”

Meanwhile, only five houses remain in the Pennsylvania town sitting atop a smoldering coal fire:

After years of delay, state officials are now trying to complete the demolition of Centralia, a borough in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania that all but ceased to exist in the 1980s after the mine fire spread beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.

Friends and I have been considering a mountain-biking expedition to Centralia. From what I’ve read, the roads are primarily safe — traffic still passes through — but visitors shouldn’t trespass in the woods southwest of town. We’re looking for a complete stranger with whom we have no emotional attachment to ride point. Wanna come along?

Slashing Prices on Long Beach West

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Looks like Stratford mayor John Harkins had to break the bad news to town officials — the same news I broke in December:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will start removing more than 40 vacant cottages, outbuildings and docks from Long Beach West in February even though local officials say the previously approved sale of the 35-acre barrier beach to the federal agency is in jeopardy.

…

Those are among the issues ironed out during a Wednesday night meeting among town and federal officials, who met behind closed doors in Harkins’ Town Hall office.

All sides agreed afterward that demolition of the cottages will move forward despite announcement recently by the non-profit Trust for Public Land — the intermediary agency that is supposed to transfer the property to the fish and wildlife service within five years — that the land is now valued at less than the minimum $10 million voters overwhelmingly approved in a November 2008 referendum.

With the land value now estimated at $7 million, and potentially lower, that means the sale is in jeopardy, according to both Harkins and TPL officials.

The consensus is the lower price tag calls for a new referendum, though my hope is this kills the deal permanently. Fish and Wildlife are not the villains in any sense but I see little gain — certainly not financial — in the town surrendering over a mile of deserted shoreline to federal authority. Development isn’t a concern; access is, and Stratford is better situated to steward Long Beach West than anyone else.

Make Mine Maymin

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Phil Maymin, bon vivant and 2006 Libertarian candidate for Connecticut’s 4th congressional district, dropped a line this week to inform me of his new collection Free Your Inner Yankee, the follow-up to his 2008 smash Yankee Wake Up. Both volumes (affordable! Kindleable!) gather together his essays from the Fairfield County Weekly. In his latest, Phil discourses upon Connecticut history, libertarianism, and presumably whatever happened to Chris Shays’s lunch money.

I’m Jackson Kuhl and I approve these books.

Coyote Calculations

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The coyote population of Connecticut is on the rise. Or maybe not. Nobody knows because the state DEP’s Wildlife Division hasn’t tallied them:

Coyotes are difficult to count because they only settle down when they are giving birth during the spring, according to Paul Rego, also a wildlife biologist with the DEP. Rego estimates the population in Connecticut ranges from 2,000 to 4,000. The number of complaints about coyotes received by the DEP has risen over the last few years to around 400 a year, he says, though it’s unclear whether that number represents more contact with humans or a success in the initiative to encourage reports of a sighting.

Coincidentally, I did some preliminary research back in November for an article on coyotes before becoming distracted by my feature on Long Beach West. I interviewed Rego and at the time he had no idea what the coyote population of Connecticut was. He said that while sightings and complaints were more frequent, he felt the population was stable.

I asked him how he could justify this belief without having a head count, particularly in light of coyotes’ high reproductive rate. He replied that once coyotes filled available habitat (one estimate I was given by another source said coyotes prefer ten square miles for every mated pair), their numbers would be kept in check.

Yes — but there’s no reason to think they’ve reached that point yet. With abundant food — garbage, deer (another problem here in CT), small pets, rodents — and without predators, there’s little evidence to suggest coyotes have reached equilibrium between reproduction and mortality. Habitat only serves as a check on population when there’s too few resources, but by all accounts Connecticut coyotes are well-fed and thriving.

It would seem after my interview Rego collected himself enough to be able to provide the story’s author a more substantial answer than he could give me, though apparently he still couldn’t say whether their numbers were growing. That’s because only a study — not a gut feeling — can tell us if the population is stable or otherwise.

Photo of a coyote skeleton preserved in the brea. Taken at the Page Museum in Los Angeles.