The Albany Pine Bush

I was in upstate New York for the weekend, and took a trip to one of my favorite nature spots, the Pine Bush. It's a pine barrens, which means an ecosystem on dry, acidic soil -- usually sand -- dominated by short shrubs and grasses, and a modest growth of trees. Pine barrens would, in time, naturally be converted to more traditional forests, but the dry soil and abundance of low vegetation lead to frequent fires that clear out new trees that would, in other circumstances, out-compete the pitch pine, heaths, and scrub oaks that thrive there. New Jersey's coastal pine barrens are famous, but the Pine Bush is considered to be one of the best example of an inland pine barrens in the world.

The Pine Bush is home to a number of rare or unique plants and animals, and there is considerable pressure on it from developers, particularly Crossgates Mall and the Albany City Landfill, both right next door. It's terrible farmland, and one of my field guides quotes a 19th century author as calling it "as forlorn, miserable and unsatisfactory a combination of sand, swamp, and aridity, as the Union can produce", and "a mistake in nature". Now, of course, we appreciate such areas for qualities besides their agricultural potential, but for a long time they were something that needed fixing, and two-thirds of the pine barrens in the northeast were either destroyed for their sand and pitch, built over, or taken over by other ecosystems due to systematic fire prevention. I blame, in part, Smokey the Bear.

I visited the Karner Barrens section of the Pine Bush, and photographed some of the pitch pine/scrub oak community there. I was really hoping to see the endangered Karner blue butterfly, but was disappointed, not surprisingly. There was, however, a a controlled burn performed recently along the trail I walked -- the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission is responsible for fire management, and regularly burns small sections of the Preserve to maintain a healthy pine barrens ecology, and to avoid the build-up of fuel that would enable a larger, uncontrollable fire in the future.

My full gallery of photos from the day can be seen here.