| National Champion Yellow Birch Gould City, Upper Peninsula, Michigan 
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| New National Champion
Northern Red Oak |
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BUFFALO, New York—Nestled within a high cove scalloped into the edge of Zoar Valley's towering cliffs, the last vestige of virgin forest in Western New York clings to life.
In a hemlock grove in Angola, the region's oldest living creatures turn their needlelike leaves to summer sunlight—as they did decades before Columbus
On a plateau overlooking Cattaraugus Creek, a giant tree that may be the largest of its kind on the planet sends massive roots into a forest floor.
Treasures long thought lost forever, the woods that once carpeted much of this area hasn't vanished completely—at least, not yet.
A surprising number of survivors from past centuries have been turned up in an ongoing survey that has yet to reach every corner of Western New York.
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"We found the first virgin forest in New York outside the Adirondack and Catskill preserves," said Bruce Kershner of Western New York Old Growth Forest Survey, a volunteer effort gaining national recognition.
"We also found the oldest living things in Western New York that are documented, and we discovered the largest red oak in the world," the botanist and forest ecologist said.
Surprisingly, even for the survey team, all three sites aren't in heavily forested Southern Tier. They're all in Erie County, home to the state's second-biggest city.
To date, A five-member group formed at a 1989 meeting of Niagara Frontier Botanical Society, has visited over 140 sites. Forty-four turned out to be ancient forests.
Few of those forests, however, come close to matching twigs with an unlikely grove in Angola-by-the-Lake, where slow-growing western hemlock tower skyward. Checking out the site, team members found a recently cut tree with growth rings "like grooves in a vinyl record." Counting, they were stunned to find the hemlock was 515 years old—already past the sapling stage when Columbus reached America.
"I believe it was an 18-inch tree," Kershner said. "And there were 30- or 40-inch trees in the same section. There's no question that this was a smaller one, and there were a lot of larger trees there."
Half a millennium isn't a record for this part of the world. Stunted cedars believed over 1,300 years old were found clinging to rocky Niagara Escarpment cliffs in Ontario.
Lacking landowner permission, the survey won't disclose an exact location. The grove, though, covers several acres, and is part of an old-growth forest seen, but not noticed, by scores of people each day.
A large number of the region's old growth forests and groves, in fact, are surprisingly in secluded and easy to see:
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The survey has roots in an accessible old-growth forest—Reinstein Woods State Nature Preserve in Cheektowaga, where regular tours are held. Kershner was called on to do a four-year study of that 80-acres, at a time when accepted lore held all old forests in this area had been logged. His careful documentation of a forest with trees rooted deep in the 19th century opened a few eyes to the possibilities.
"We thought, if there's old-growth forest in Cheektowaga, with its densely settled population, there could be other ancient forests in Western New York," Kershner said.
Kershner and Williamsville teacher James Battaglia decided to look, and were quickly joined by botanist Michael Siuta. Ecologist Charle Rossenburg and environmental remediation contractor Glen Gelinas soon joined the team.
So far, they've found 500 to 600 acres of old trees scattered throughout the region, and another 600 acres within the largest single forest preserve in the area, Alleghany State Park. Some are in stands of less than an acre, some in groves of up to 20 acres, and some in forests of 20 acres or more—the minimum size to sustain a complete forest ecology.
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Old-growth forests generally survive only because they were too inaccessible, too difficult or scrubby for commercial logging that stripped this area in the last century.
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Compared with the woods that once carpeted much of this region. The survey calculates, the survivors amount to a tiny fraction of 1 percent—about the equivalent of three half-acre home lots, in the middle of the 67,000-acre Alleghany State Park. And, so far, the survey has found only one "virgin" forest remnant, along the Zoar Valley gorge.
"It's called High Cove, part of a 30-acre old-growth forest we found on Erie County's side," he said. "The forest extends along the canyon on either side for some ways."
Hiking through the woods, the team members were stunned as they approached trees towering an unremarkable 709 feet above the cliff edge—and then, on closer inspection, realized the trunks extended another 70 feet down, into a deep bowl-shaped depression set into the edge of a 350-foot cliff.
To be considered old growth, a site has to meet an eight-point checklist of age-indicating items, and it must show little human disturbance for at least the past 150 years.
This forest remnant was more than that. It met the team's definition of virgin woodland.
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"If any human being has ever been there, he's fallen in by accident, and he hasn't touched anything," Kershner said. "it's nature at its purest. It's been there, like that, for thousands and thousands of years."
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Even though the site can be precisely mapped—it's in the state's Zoar Valley Multiple Use Area, south of Vail Road and midway between Unger and Button roads—reaching it is a hard hike through trackless woods, on a compass bearing.
"There's not a single sign a human ever did anything to it. We think a tiny number of human beings have ever been in it," added Kershner, who escorted Dept. of Environmental Conservation officials to the site.
Nearby, in Nature Sanctuary Society's 35-acre William Alexander Preserve, what at first looks like a thicket refuses to separate into tree trunks as hikers near. In fact, it's a massive single trunk—the largest red oak known, dividing into two massive stems just above eye level.
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On a bluff overlooking Cattaraugus Creek, the giant is 7 feet 7 inches in diameter—a bit larger than the previous National Champion, a solitary oak in a farm field near Rochester.
Its age is unknown—like the huge solitary white oak in the middle of Buffalo's Delaware Park Meadow, it is too thick for a complete core boring, and the only way to accurately count its annual growth rings is to cut it down.
The survey team pauses only briefly to pay its homage. There are other trees out there—a Chestnut Oak clinging to the gorge wall may also be a State Champion, and the New York list already include five other Western New York trees, including Erie County's National Champion Staghorn Sumac. More important, there are another 44 candidate sites to examine, and entire ancient forests still unexplored.
| see also:
Zoar Valley is gorge-ous Amazed by the tall trees Ecologists find old growth forest Our forests primeval |
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Old-growth forests are valued for beauty—the "forest cathedral"—and the genetic heritage of hardy, long-lived trees and other plant species. "It's not about rare species," Kershner said. "It's about age, and how long it's been untouched and natural. It's like finding endangered species—but it's an endangered community."
The main threats to these forests are pressure from expanding human development, and over-browsing by swelling deer populations. In many areas, deer are the biggest threat.
