Protecting the North Woods

While speaking to a faculty member about the proposed development I discovered that the site of construction in the woods is actually going to be in the oldest stand of trees in the North Woods. When I asked how old the stand was I was told that it was somewhere around 95 years old. That makes it one of the oldest tree stands in South County. That may not mean much but think of it from a teaching perspective. Thousands of students have spent time learning in the North Woods. Off the top of my head I know for a fact that BIO101, Forestry, Plant Taxonomy, Wildlife Field Techniques, and Wetland Wildlife take trips into the North Woods. URI's own Wildlife Society uses it to teach local High School students in. It is an important part of campus as an educational tool and destroying one of the oldest tree stands we have available to us means losing a resource that in all honesty takes ~95 years to get back! We have plenty of examples of disturbed forest to look at. We have plenty of examples of regenerating forest, but without this stand of old trees we will lack an example of a mature forest. Speaking from my own experience as a senior at URI, hands on learning is the best you can get and there is nothing hands on about looking at a picture of a mature forest or reading about one when you can walk across the street to be in one. If that gets taken away, then pictures and words on a page will be all that we have readily available on our campus for Faculty and for students.