In this interview, we explore the topic of off-leash dogs in nature areas and look for ways to approach the issue through a conversation that fosters a sense of community instead of confrontation. To discuss this, Beakuency welcomes Heidi Bock, Vice President of Conservation for the Columbia Land Conservancy, a nonprofit land trust that works with the community to conserve farmland, forests, and wildlife habitat in Columbia County.
Compassion begins with recognizing that we can’t always see what others are going through. Heidi shares examples of wildlife whose presence may not be obvious but whose survival depends on our choices, including the ground-nesting bird Bobolink. She also discusses the CLC’s informational signage on its properties and its educational programs, which are designed to inspire learning and compassion—not just for wildlife, but also for the people we encounter on the trails.
Columbia Land Conservancy website: https://columbialand.org/
This interview was recorded at Ooms Conservation Area on May 17th, 2024 and broadcasted on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7FM on May 25th, 2024.
Interview Transcript
Heidi Bock: Thanks for having me. I'm Heidi Bock. I'm the vice president of conservation for the Columbia Land Conservancy, and I grew up here in Columbia county, and I've been with the organization for 18 years.
Mayuko Fujino: And could you also tell us what Columbia Land Conservancy is?
HB: Of course. The Columbia Land Conservancy is a nonprofit land trust, and our mission is to bring people together to conserve, appreciate, and enjoy the land. We’ve been around for nearly 40 years, and we work with individuals, communities, and partners to ensure Columbia County remains beautiful, livable, and resilient. One of the ways that we work to achieve our mission is with the 10 public lands that we own and manage throughout the county, like Ooms, where we are today. These spaces are open daily, free of charge from dawn till dusk.
MF: And dogs are welcome at CLC properties, but there are some rules.
HB: That’s correct. Dogs are welcome at all of our properties. And we ask that people keep the dogs leashed and pick up after them and carry out the waste from the site.
MF: Right. Which isn’t always the reality. I really wanted to talk to you about this. I want to find a way to talk about this without getting mad or making people mad, because it’s really not necessary.
I came to this question this past winter, January or February, I was taking a walk at Roe Jan Park in Hillsdale, which has a big field. I would come across off-leash dog walkers all the time and start feeling anxious about American Woodcocks coming back to that field soon, and then eventually, other ground nesting birds too. In February, I was like, “Maybe I’ll say something in March.” And then March came, and I thought, “Maybe I’ll say something in April. It’s going to be the prime breeding time. And maybe that’s when I’ll say something.” But it just made me so nervous to even think of it. Even talking to strangers is not easy. No matter how politely you say it, nobody feels good to be told that you’re doing anything wrong. Even if I don’t mean to hurt their feelings. It’s just how we, people react.
HB: It’s something that I think all organizations and state properties that own land and allow dogs struggle with a lot. We have signs up, and we have the rules posted. Everybody thinks that their dog is okay off-leash, and the thing is that, one of the reasons that we ask people to leash their dogs is, our properties, we use as nature classrooms for our education program. Our educators bring groups of children and larger groups of people to the sites. And people might not want an unknown dog running up to them. Kids can sometimes be scared of dogs. Or, the kids can scare dogs. You don’t know how somebody’s dog is going to react in a situation like that.
We want people to be able to enjoy nature. We want all people to be able to enjoy nature. Many people use our properties to go for walks and bird watch. And we really ask people to respect each other on the trails. And that includes leashing your dog. And having dogs on leash, also, to your point about the Woodcocks and ground nesting birds, it minimizes the impact to wildlife, and not just to birds, because there’s lots of other things that call these places home. If you have your dog on leash, you don’t have to worry about them running into other wildlife.
You don’t want to be out here and have your dog come into contact with a porcupine or a skunk. You don’t want to ride home in a car with a dog that’s been sprayed by a skunk.
MF: I heard it's really horrible.
HB: Knock on wood, I have not encountered it; my dog has not encountered a skunk. But yeah, exactly. So, it’s both for the safety of the wildlife and for the safety of your dog. We maintain the trails, and then the rest of the properties, we leave as wild as possible to provide that habitat. So, we don’t know what’s out in those fields. There could be groundhog holes. We don’t want you or your dog getting injured. And that’s why we have the trails marked. And, like I said, in addition to porcupines and skunks, there’s lots of other animals like foxes and squirrels, chipmunks, they call this place home. And the less we can disturb them, the better. That’s part of our mission as a conservation organization, is to provide habitat.
MF: Having those educational programs about nature at your property must help, because I think that’s the challenge; when you stay on the trail, you look at the field but you have no idea what’s in there. And, because you can’t see it, it looks as if it’s all empty open field. That was my personal experience too, before learning to watch birds. I never heard of some of the birds, for example, Bobolink. When I saw the name for the first time, I didn’t even know how to pronounce it. And yet, they’re everywhere in the season. They’re not super hidden, but even then, without knowing what’s out there, what they look like and what they do, I didn’t realize they were out there. Having that knowledge literally opened my eyes to their existence.
HB: Yeah, I think that’s particularly true of the Bobolink. Similarly, I wasn’t super aware of them when I first started working for the Land Conservancy. When you come to Ooms this time of year and you hear them — once you know what you’re hearing, you start hearing it everywhere. The males are much more apparent. They sit up at the top of grass. They’re black and white, and pretty distinct. And then their call, which I’ve heard people refer to it, sounds like R2D2 from Star Wars. [laughs] It’s sort of metallic-y, bubbly sounding. So, when you walk around the fields here, you hear that, and, like you’re saying, once you know what to either look for or listen for, you’re going to start noticing it more. But if you don't, it sort of all blends together and you're not really aware of where the sound is coming from or what they might be doing.
And I think part of the challenge is, at least with some of the grassland birds, is the females are brown, and you can’t see them generally and they’re in the grass. So, yeah, I think education is a big part of it and something that we try to provide opportunities for people to get out and learn more about what we have here, how we’re working to manage the property to allow for people to come and enjoy it, but also provide habitat for species that are in decline, like the grassland birds.
MF: I don’t want to shame people for not knowing what’s out there, especially since I was that person not so long ago. So, I wanted to provide information to the community through this interview.
When we talk about dogs, often the counter argument is, “My dog is very well trained. My dog is friendly. They’re good with kids.” But even the best dog in the universe can be a threat to little things like a mole. Moles don’t get your friendliness. They’re afraid of even barking, or the smell of the dog, which can really stress wildlife.
HB: Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, there’s definitely dogs that will chase wildlife, it’s just their nature. And things like even rabbits, or some of the other smaller mammals, it’s not just the chasing that’s the problem. It can be disturbing if they have young, and they might not return back to the den. And the dog’s smell can often alert small animals that there’s a threat around. Understanding, obviously, that there’s foxes and coyotes, but that’s part of the natural life cycle of these animals. Even though dogs are related to coyotes, it’s not the same thing, because dogs are sort of introducing a threat that isn’t part of the animals’ normal system. So, it’s really part of the reason we have the trails placed where we do on the sites. We try to limit the impact we have on the sites when we create the trails, and, in doing so, ask people to stay on the trails, including with their dogs.
MF: So it's not so much about the dog being a good dog or a bad dog. It’s just dogs being dogs. And dogs can’t help it.
HB: Right. And we want everybody to enjoy their experience here. I know that sometimes the argument of people is that, well, my dog needs to run. And I get it, I have a dog and I know she loves to run around. But there’s places in the county, there’s dog parks that are built for dogs. It’s also, like I said earlier, just being respectful to your other trail users. You don’t know, your dog may be the friendliest dog in the world, but if somebody has a fear or a phobia or an allergy. You just want everybody to be able to enjoy it. And that means respecting the rules that we have.
MF: Right, yeah. Allergy and phobia, that’s another thing that’s not visible from outside. You don’t know what’s going on, just like in the field.
HB: I think another thing is that, if you meet my dog, I always tell you, she’s an over enthusiastic greeter, she likes to bark. She’s friendly, but it can be scary to other dogs. So, I try to, when I’m out with her, I go to the side of the trail, let the other dog walker pass, because you don’t know what that dog’s dealing with. It could be in training, it could be new to the environment, and not every dog wants to meet another dog. And just keep that in mind, too, when you’re here walking your dog, your dog might be the friendliest dog in the world, but the other dog might be nervous and scared, and you don’t want to have them have a bad experience, either.
MF: We mentioned Bobolinks, and I think it’s a good example of ground nesting birds. When we hear “bird nest”, we tend to think of nests either on top of a tree, or underneath the roof, somewhere higher up. We don’t necessarily imagine, if you’re not a birder, for it to be just sitting on the ground. But that’s what Bobolinks do. (See a photo of Bobolink nest on Mass Audubon website here.)
So I wanted to talk about this particular bird because right now it’s the nesting season, they’re here in Ooms Conservation Area. I wanted to know how they’re doing, the current situation of Bobolinks on your property. Do you have a way to estimate how many are here, and how many nests are out there?
HB: We haven’t studied it recently. A number of years ago, an intern did an initial study, I think this is maybe 2015, and wasn’t looking specifically at nests, but was out doing sort of point counts on just the number of birds throughout the property. And we’re hoping to partner with the Berkshire Bird Observatory to do some nest counts this summer, and start a regular field study around this, because we don’t know. We know that the birds are here because we see them and hear them. We know both a number of different grassland birds and ground nesting birds use Ooms. We don’t know how many and how successful they are. So that’s something we want to start looking at, as we’re actively managing this property for grassland birds. If what we’re doing is working, or if there’s something we could be doing better, we want to incorporate that. And I know, from the time that I have been with the Land Conservancy, we’ve noticed more birds here. But we don’t have a definitive number. I think the Alan Devoe Bird Club does a lot of bird walks here, and collects data and puts it in eBird. And through that, we’ve definitely seen an increase in the grassland nest, the grassland birds that use the site.
MF: It must be tricky to find nests of Bobolinks, and I guess, Meadowlarks too?
MF: Yep. We have Meadowlarks here, and I think we saw Savannah Sparrows a couple weeks ago when we were here. I think the Berkshire Bird Observatory, their executive director, Ben Nickley, has experience doing nest surveys, so we’re excited to partner with them.
*Listen/Read Beakuency interview with Ben about their Kestrel Nest Box Project here.
MF: Another thing I wanted to ask you was about the mowing practices here at Ooms that help grassland breeding birds.
HB: We changed the way that we managed the fields around 2016. Ooms is about 180 acres, and it’s mostly open fields with a large pond, Sutherland Pond, in the middle of it. And we, based on research that had come out around that time and a little bit earlier, found that one of the best management practices for grassland birds was to do rotational mowing, so that you’re not cutting down the entire property at the same time. We took the property and broke it into thirds, and we mow each section every three years. What that does is to keep the woody vegetation, it keeps the shrubs from coming in. It allows the grasses to continue to grow. So, what we’ve done here is we contract out that work. There is some research in Massachusetts and Vermont, and some programming there, that will pay the farmers to delay their mowing. Because the challenge is that a lot of these big open fields, farmers need for hay. They need it to feed their cattle or their livestock. The recommendation is to not mow until after, some of the research says, July 15th. A lot of it says after August 15th. It allows the birds to lay their nest, to lay their eggs, and the young to fledge so they’re old enough to go and survive on their own.
Delaying mowing to August 15, for farmers, what’s left in the field isn’t very good quality feed for livestock. So there is a program called the Bobolink Project. What it does is it allows farmers to delay their mowing by paying them to not mow. And then, they can use that to buy hay from a field that wouldn’t be good grassland bird habitat. Because not every field is a good grassland bird habitat, either, depending on the species. Bobolinks, if I’m remembering correctly, they can utilize smaller fields, like 10 to 15 acre fields. Some of the other birds, like the Meadowlark, need 20 to 25 acre fields. I think there’s others that even require bigger fields. So the bigger the field, the more variety of grassland birds it would accommodate. So what we’ve done here is, like I said, we’ve broken it into three different zones, and we hire somebody to come and mow those. Typically, we wait, usually till about September 1st, to make sure that everybody’s gotten out and is able to migrate.
MF: It's easy to vilify others, and there’s enough of that out there. But it’s never that simple. People often have reasons to do what they do. People may not even want to do it sometimes, maybe they think they have to. It’s best if we each can take this little part or that little part to resolve problems. The Columbia Land Conservancy made that change, also. Not just asking dog owners to change their behavior, but you’ve changed your own operation to do better for the wildlife habitat.
HB: Totally. And we're constantly learning. And that's the thing here is, like I said, we think what we're doing is, it's based on science, but that's only part of it because we want to make sure that the grass that's growing is the best type of grass for the birds. And so I think it's … I'm sorry, there's a chipmunk behind you. Just like having the best time ever. [laughs]
MF: I know, when I do an interview outside, there's so much distraction. People get distracted all the time. [laughs] I was thinking earlier when you were talking, maybe I heard a cuckoo.
HB: I think that is.
MF: I'm like, “focus, focus.”
HB: Okay, good. You seem very focused. That makes me feel better. … What was your last question? [laughs]
MF: [laughs] CLC changed the operation and learning. Constantly learning.
HB: Yeah. And one of the things that we really want to use these public lands for is demonstration properties, and helping landowners learn from what we’re doing, both successes and mistakes. If there’s something that we do, and we’re like, oh, that didn’t work, we want to share that too. Because we want to be able to use the resources that we have to share with other people, so that we can help provide the education around management in particular. We want, if somebody is doing something really cool on their property and wants to share that, we’re happy to help them showcase that, too. We want it to be a collaborative learning opportunity.
MF: Right. And even if somebody’s solution works for their situation, it doesn’t necessarily work for your field or for your land. So, that’s another complexity.
HB: Totally true. It depends on scale, it depends on the resources that you have. Like you were saying, there’s so many factors that go into it. And so, being able to show a variety of management techniques and learn from each other, I think, is really important.
MF: Yeah. Don’t think you know everything, and it’s okay to not know everything. Just ask other people.
HB: Yeah. Otherwise it’s a lot of pressure. And our staff has a wide variety of backgrounds and skills, and we try to utilize all of those, but we know we’re not the experts on everything. We know a lot of people, and in the county and in the natural resource management world, we know who to call about things. We don’t claim to be experts, but we try to use the best available data and management practices, and share that with other people.
MF: I find that really pleasant about the people in natural science. They allow themselves to make mistakes, and allow themselves to not know something, so they ask other people. That’s sort of the attitude I want all of us to have, because it’s so much easier to live that way. And dog owners can feel a little less defensive. We’re not here to shame you, but just want you to know that this is what’s happening and, you know, just let us all learn.
HB: Yeah. And I’ve talked to a few people who, when they’ve approached dog owners with their dog off leash, when they’ve approached that person with more of a question, or, you know, saying, did you know that there’s grassland nesting birds here? And talked about the fact that they’re — they might not have gone into the detail of, their grasslands in decline and these birds being threatened — but just even talking about the fact that there’s a special type of bird that there's a special type of bird that nests on the ground, that oftentimes people are more willing to put their dog on leash, because, like you were saying, they don’t know.
MF: That’s what I imagined the reaction would be.
MF: Do you have any new measures that you’re experimenting with for the concerns about off-leash dogs?
HB: Yeah. We’ve got some signs on order. We’ve created some signs around the grassland birds specifically. Because knowing that this time of year is a really important time for the grassland birds, we’re going to put some temporary signage up near the fields. At the entrance and at our kiosk, we have our rules around the dog leash policy. I think sometimes it’s helpful to have reminders throughout the site. So, what we’re going to try to do in the next few weeks is put up some signage that specifically talks about the grassland birds and why it’s important to keep your dog leashed, specifically for that reason. Hopefully, that’ll help because I think it’s easy to not think about it once you leave the parking lot.
MF: It's easy to be carried away by something.
HB: By a chipmunk.
MF: Yeah, by a chipmunk. Any photos on these signs?
HB: I believe we put a photo of a Bobolink because they're so pretty.
MF: I think that’ll be helpful because Bobolink is kind of a funny looking bird. It looks like it’s wearing a blonde wig.
HB: Yeah, I know. I’ve heard people refer to it as it looks like it’s wearing a backwards tuxedo because its front is all black, and then its back is like it’s got a tuxedo on backwards. It is a very distinct bird. And, like we were saying earlier, once you know what you’re looking at, you’re gonna start seeing it everywhere. So there’s definitely an image and then text explaining more why on this sign. So that’s coming soon, hopefully in the next two weeks.
MF: How do you expect to measure the effect of these signs?
HB: Our staff and volunteers are out here pretty regularly, so I think we will be able to have, sort of, not a scientific study, but more of anecdotal. And I feel like it also provides an opportunity to point out the signs when we have public programs here, as a reminder. It provides an additional point of information for people that when they bring their dog back here, they’ll just be like, oh, right, there’s that sign that says, there’s birds nesting here.
MF: I love the idea. Not just “please don’t do this” sort of message, but please try this; you might see an interesting thing.
Is there anything community members can do to help your efforts on this concern of off-leash dogs?
HB: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is sharing and spreading the word about grassland birds. Talking about and learning more about the grassland nesting birds and the challenges that they face. Coming to our programs that we have. And the Alan Devoe Bird Club hosts bird walks. Going to these programs, just to learn more. And I mentioned earlier some of the volunteers that we have. Volunteering with us is a great way to learn more about how we’re managing the sites and becoming more active in helping to manage and get out on the trails and meet people.
And then, I think, I guess I just keep coming back to our education programs and learning more, because like you were saying, in your experience, the more you know, it provides just that added layer of information for when you’re walking around a place.
MF: And you have more fun.
HB: And you have more fun, definitely. We want it to be fun.
MF: And where can people find the information on these opportunities?
HB: Our website is columbialand.org and at the top there's an events button, and you just click that and you can sign up for our email list to get emails about the events. And then we're also on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.
MF: All right, thank you very much.
HB: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
Bird-inspired music of the month
Bobolink-tunes by Sara Lula MacClellan, a professional whistler from the 1920s, and Australian guitarist Tim Cunningham. Also Avocet by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch.
