Quaking Bogs & Old Forests: Extraordinary Ecosystems with Nathan Herbert

Dive into the wild heart of northeast Indiana in this episode of The Lake Doctor Podcast, where we sit down with Nathan Herbert—a lifelong herpetology enthusiast turned Northeast Indiana Conservation Lands Manager for The Nature Conservancy. Nathan takes us on a captivating journey from his childhood days flipping rocks for snakes in Pennsylvania to his current role stewarding remarkable natural treasures.

This episode explores The Nature Conservancy's properties in Kosciusko County, including Oppenheim Woods—a 62-acre mixed hardwood forest with trees over 200 years old—and a hidden bog not open to the public due to its fragility and rarity. Nathan highlights restoration efforts, invasive species management, and the unique biodiversity of bogs and fens, including carnivorous plants, rare turtles, and rediscovered species like arrow grass. 

With tales of massasauga rattlesnakes, quaking bogs, and community weed-wrangling events, this episode sparks awe for Indiana’s wild places and shows how everyone can play a role in helping to preserve them.

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.

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Transcript

Meet Nathan Herbert, Land Steward

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Light Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light and my co-host, Dr. Nate Bosch, an official lake nerd.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Yes, that's right, Susie. I received my doctorate from the University of Michigan in Lamology, which is the study of freshwater lakes. In today's episode, we have Nathan Herbert. He's the land manager with the Nature Conservancy.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

And we're going to learn where the best stand of trillium is in Casyasco County in the springtime. We're excited about today's episode, The Doctor's Inn. Herbert, thank you for joining us. And I hear you're a Herper. Tell us about that.

Herping Roots And Snake Science

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Okay. Well, thanks for the welcome. I'm glad to be here. Uh yeah, I guess. I mean, I've Herper, I just basically um recreationally and in professionally occasionally work with reptiles and amphibians.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

So that's herpetology.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Herpetology is to study reptiles and amphibians, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I go out and I mean, since I've been a little kid, I go out and look for them. I grew up, so I grew up in Southwest PA, just um sort of at the base of Chestnut Ridge, which is the westernmost ridge of the Appalachians in Pennsylvania. Um, and pretty much as long as I've been in two feet and able to go outside, I mean, that's what I do is I I go outside and I turn over rocks and I was finding things, and I'd come home with, you know, it's it's like Dennis the Menace, I'd come home with pockets full of snakes and and and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Um your mom must have been a snake.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, I mean, you know, they're easier to catch than birds and they're and things like that. And so I think that for a lot of people that are into herpetology and reptiles and amphibians, you know, it's like, yeah, that's that's an easy in because you what's the turtle gonna do? It can't run away.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Okay, so who pays you to be a herpetologist?

Role At The Nature Conservancy

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Well, no one pays me to be a herpetologist specifically now. Um, in the past, I've worked with organizations that my work with them was to focus on, you know, inventorying and finding rare uh herps, rare reptiles and amphibians, and participating in studies. My graduate degree, my master's degree from Purdue focused on studying the ecology of water snakes. Um, and while I'm not really a herpetologist anymore compared to actual herpetologists in academia and things like that, I try to remain as peripherally engaged as I can, you know, through helping out with research. I go up to Michigan every year and I help out with a long-term study of Massauca rattlesnakes. I uh assist with, you know, recovery plans for other rare snakes in the tri-state area. And uh I try to remain engaged as much as I can in my current job with the nature conservancy.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

So, what do you get to do with the nature conservancy?

Inside Oppenheim Woods

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I am the Northeast Indiana. My title is the Northeast Indiana Conservation Lands Manager. Um, it's a long phrase that basically just means I take care of our properties and our protected areas, our nature reserves in Northeast Indiana. Casciasco County is one of them, um, but also Elkart, Noble, no, uh Noble County, LaGrange to Ben DeCalb. Um, and um I a represent TNC and help pursue our conservation interests in these areas as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

So, what are the properties in Cassiasco County that you get to shepherd?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Uh the two properties that we have in Casciasco County that um I take care of are Oppenheim Woods and uh Birkett Bog. And Oppenheim Woods is near Lake Tippecanoe. It's um a 62-acre tract of forest that uh was bequeathed to us by your friend at Oppenheim and her late husband, yes. That's correct. And um, so we I I take care of that place and it's open to the public to go visit. Um it's a rarity in northern Indiana because it has some of the oldest trees you're likely to see, especially in northeast Indiana. Um and uh yeah, it's it's it's one of those special places where you step into um you kind of get a feel for maybe, maybe what the forests look like pre-settlement. Really? When you read about the forests in Indiana, they had to be spectacular. Um, I mean everywhere, pre-settlement.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

You and I got to do an interpretive hike there together uh a few years ago, and you're right, it is a beautiful, remarkable place. Right. But there are accounts of, you know, from early surveying work in the early 1800s of tulip trees that were 11 feet in diameter, and we don't see that big of trees in that woods, but it still is pretty impressive. Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

So the trees in the alpine woods, what kind of trees would I see when I go there?

What “Old” Forest Really Means

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Uh so it's a mixed hardwood forest, which means that you're gonna see maples, oaks of different species. There's a lot of sugar maple, there's a lot of beech, um, and then oaks of different species. Uh, predominantly the main oak that you'll see of any size is red oak. Um, but there's also tulip poplars in there, hickory, um, and then a lot of other trees that I guess just don't really get the credit that uh, you know, that the oaks and the hickories and things do, things like hackberry, black cherry, things like that. But what's remarkable about it is that when the Oppenheims purchased it, my understanding, and maybe you can correct me, I'd love to get I'd love to get the straight story from somebody that knew Pat Oppenheim. Um, as I understand it, that when the Oppenheims purchased it, it was being looked at for subdivision and development. Um, they lived next to it, they didn't want to see that happen, so they purchased this tract of forest. And they basically sat on it for the next 60 years. Um and so this is a section of forest, a section of Casyusco County that didn't get logged in the first half of the 1900s, um, and had already had old trees on it at the time, and then was not disturbed or logged after that. And so there are trees in there that we verified through, you know, boring into the trunk. I went in with Justin Maxwell, who's a dendrochronologist with IU. I don't know if he's still there. Um and you know, we have trees in that, in that, in those, that forest that are in the 180 to 225 year age class. So that's a that's a pretty old tree uh for northeast Indiana.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

So one of the things one of the things you work on are ecosystems. And you've labeled this as an old ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Well, I think that we should probably be cautious when we use words like old and things like that. It's certainly not old growth, and that term in itself doesn't really have a clear meaning. I don't think it's a very useful term when we talk about woods. I think it's mostly, you know, kind of a nice marketing term for a forest, right? It's certainly not vo virgin, it's certainly not remnant, right? It was definitely logged at some point, right? But it's probably for portions of the forest, it's been at least 200 years since it was logged.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Which would make sense because when Indiana was becoming a state and there was a lot of surveying work done in the early 1800s, that was right along when a lot of the logging was happening in Indiana, right? And so maybe even it was logged at that time, but still you'd have 200 years then after that if it was untouched after that for these trees to grow up to the trees to come back.

Climax Forests And Fire

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yeah, yeah. It's you know, a good synopsis of Indiana's forest is the beginning of Marion T. Jackson's book, um Natural Heritage of Indiana. And, you know, Nate, they they talk about that, you know, Marion Jackson talks about that at the beginning. You know, there were, I forget, 150 subspecies of trees in Indiana. Um, you know, some of them, of course, are gone or disappearing. Um and you're talking about average, average trunk diameters across species of five to seven feet. They talk about, you know, certain trees that have a, you know, a predisposition to get really big, like a sycamore. Um, I think down near Kokomo or something, there was a sycamore whose stump was 50, and it's measured, so this is verified, 56 feet in in circumference. Um Wow. And I think I don't know, I think maybe portions of that stump are preserved. Um, 20 million acres of forest like that on Indiana. A lot of it beach maple, right? Uh, climax, beach maple forest. Um, and Casillasco is right in the mix of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah, let's talk about that idea of climax because when we look at different ecosystems, we have sort of an eventual stage as those ecosystems get older, and in what we would call kind of a climax stage in a in a forest in Indiana. My understanding is we would have either beach maple or oak hickory would be kind of two options. Like how would a forest move in one or the other direction? And is it really that cut and dry of those two categories?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, you know, this goes into realms that maybe I'm not exactly an expert on. Um, but my understanding is that, you know, oak hickory is obviously it's going to depend on you know, hydrology, soils, things like that. Um, but also oak hickory tends to be more of a serile forest. Um in explain what that means. Okay, so it's a successional forest, right? And so if we have a big stand of beach maple and a tornado comes through, right, or any sort of disturbance, a fire or something like that, and wipes it out, you know, you get what's called succession, secondary succession, right? It's no different than if you have like a you know an agricultural field that gets taken out of production and then it becomes an old field and then shrubs grow in, right? And over time it returns to forest. That can take centuries, right? Um, and so with oak hickory, oak hickories are fire-dependent forests a lot of times. And so if you have forests in an area that's getting, you know, uh a return interval of fire, it that's appropriate to sort of suppress beech maples, it will remain oak hickory. Got it, right? Oaks and hickories are adapted, they're bark and so forth, they have adaptations to withstand the fire. Um, but without that regular disturbance, whether it's wind disturbance or fire or whatever, right, the trend is going to be to transition into beach maple. And then beach maple sits there as a climax community until disturbance comes through and opens up room for oaks and hickories and other species again.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

And this relates to one of our earlier episodes with uh Nate Simmons, Simons talking uh about oak savannas and prairies and that continuum of sometimes you have more oak trees kind of with hickories closer together, which would be more of the forest side of the continuum, or uh more just of those tall grass prairie stands with with no trees, which would be the other side of the continuum, but much of Indiana was somewhere between those two extremes where there were some oaks and hickories kind of spaced out, almost like a parkland sort of an idea where you have a few trees with the grasses kind of underneath the canopy. Yeah.

Indiana’s Mosaic Of Soils And Biomes

SPEAKER_00 11:59

And if you go like Indiana was Indiana was populated or we'll say colonized and cleared basically from southeast towards northwest. Um you know, and so if you look across the state at the soils, the geology, even even there are remnants of Indiana's natural history, even in the names of things. Um so, but if we were to look generally speaking across the state, right, you would see uh eastern deciduous forests, 20 million acres, that dominated most of the state, you know, early on before before settlement. In 70 years, those forests were all but gone, right? People got to work clearing the land. Um but as you go west, you start to grade from denser forests into you know more grassland, you know, woodlands, savannas, prairies, you start to see propasslands popping up here and there. If you go, and we're gonna go outside of Casciasco, but if you go on 20 and you take Highway 20 out of Angola, like across the state, um, the the terrain, the topography is very rolling because of all the glacial deposit, all the sand and gravel that the receding glaciers drop. Um, but you'll see names like Prairie Heights High School, Brushy Prairie, right? If you look at the soil maps, you'll see that, especially in these glaciated regions, and Casciusco County is in the heart of the glaciated region. You know, you see these really mosaic, sort of like, especially if the soil map's got a lot of color, right? It looks like a quilt of all these different soil types, right? And some of those soils are really good for supporting forest, some of those soils are good for supporting wetlands, some of those soils, you know, they're they're they're for grasslands and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

And we in Casciasco County have two townships in the middle of Casciasco County, one called Prairie and one called Plain. Yeah. So I think that's those remnant names like you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

And one called clay.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Which would, yeah, which would indicate what was what was. The soil type. Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

And so you start to see around LaGrange County, Casciasco County, eh, maybe in the Noble County, you know what I mean? But as you go west, you start to see those openings, right? All dictated by, you know, historical soils and glaciation. You but historically you would start to see those openings in the forest as uh we start to grade into more grassland on the west side of the state.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

So does a forest have like a life cycle?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, I mean, it does. So it gets back to that idea of succession, right? So in a vacuum, right? We'll take out invasive species, we'll take out, you know, human disturbance, you know, and things like that. In a vacuum, you know, it's it's uh disturbance or sort of wipes the slate clean, depending on the severity disturbance, right? So like succession, glaciers would create a situation of primary succession where you're basically a bedrock and you have to rebuild the soil. Right? Glaciers create a situation of primary succession, extremely severe fire can create a similar thing because it burns up the organic mass in the soil and basically deadens the soil.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Um so primary succession is sort of like working from a bare slate. Secondary succession is where you have some intact soil, you have an organic component to the soil. Um, and so you're working off of seed banks and things like that. And if we think about the life cycle of a forest, we can go back to that idea of imagine what happens if you take a manicured lawn or if you take uh an agricultural field out of production, right? You know the next year it's gonna be weedy and there's gonna be a lot of really opportunistic things. And that's that situation is gonna increase and eventually you'll start to see shrubs popping up in there. Again, we're gonna leave out the invasive shrubs for now. Right? Thank you. And you'll start to see, you know, pioneer tree species moving in, tree species that have uh the ability to take advantage rapidly of clearings and openings. A sycamore is a good example of that. Um, you know, box elder is an example of that. You start to see these pioneer tree species. And so that would be, you could consider, okay, this is the forest just starting with these pioneer tree species, right? And then over time, you have other tree species. Um, you know, cottonwoods are another really good example of a pioneer tree species.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Even wild black cherry.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yes. Yeah, because the birds. So we think about seed dispersal, right? On the wind or in in birds. Um, and then that would be considered like the beginnings of the forest life cycle, right? And then over time, you have other trees that move in, oaks and hickories who have a different sort of life history, a different growth strategy. They stay low and slow for a few years, five to ten years, and then they start to go up, right? So they establish a really good root system. And as the oaks and hickories are moving in, then like we say, we we it starts to grade oak hickory, mixed hardwood, transitioning over towards like a climax forest situation.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

And climax means dying?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

No, climax just means that that is the end stage of sort of succession and often stable.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

So even if there is some minor disturbances coming through, it keeps kind of going back to that same eventual stage. Right.

Life Cycle Of Lakes

SPEAKER_03 17:22

So do lakes have that kind of life cycle, Nate?

Natural Vs Cultural Eutrophication

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Yeah, so uh quite different, but also some similarities. So a lake, if we think again of a glacially formed lake, which most of our lakes in in Casciasco County and northern Indiana would be glacially formed lakes, you would scour that area out, or you have a big chunk of ice that's left behind, which would form a kettle lake as that ice melts and then that depression fills with water. And so you start from an early stage, like the successional stages that Nathan was just talking about. It could be all the way back to primary succession. And so you have very clear water, a deep blue color to the water, not a lot of particles in the water, probably not a lot of fish in the early uh age of a lake, because you don't have a lot of nutrients built up yet to really get the food chain going. And um, not a lot of muck on the bottom. It's gonna be a rocky or a gravelly, maybe sandy bottom, whatever was left by the glacier initially. But then over time, you're gonna start to get some muck building up, some of the organic matter uh similar to you see in a forest, um, because those the plants and animals are gonna die, they're gonna sink to the bottom and they're gonna be dying and sinking faster than they can decompose. And so that organic matter is gonna start to build up over time. So the lake gets shallower. It's also gonna start to get more green or brown in color, not that deep blue anymore, because now you have more particles. You've got algae, you've got sediment particles, you've got zooplankton swimming around in there. And uh, you're gonna have more plants growing around the margins because again, we've got more nutrients around there. Those plants are gonna have the feedback then of building up the bottom sediment faster again. So it's gonna get shallower over time. And uh then eventually the lake uh will become really shallow and become a wetland where you've got shallow enough that plants, you know, emergent plants go all span all the way across the lake. Now you're not gonna be able to have uh fish in there, or maybe just fish like carp or catfish or something like that. And uh the lake then could go further into wet prairie, prairie, forests, and into the successional stages that Nathan was just talking about. But that takes a long time. But as I'm guessing in the case of some of the terrestrial environments you work in, I know in the case of aquatic environments, people can speed that up. So that process of a lake filling in and getting older is called eutrophication. But there's something called cultural eutrophication, where by access nutrients coming into the lake from the outside, we can make that lake get older faster than it naturally would.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

And does that occur without human intervention, or is that driven by humans?

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Eutrophication happens naturally. So over time, we're gonna have more productivity in the lake as more nutrients come in from the watershed around, all natural. But humans with agriculture or fertilizer on golf courses or construction sites that are eroding sediment or people's lawns that have access fertilizer or bad boating practices. That those things wash in then more of the nutrients, and then you're gonna heighten that, which is the cultural eutrophication.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

So places like Oppenheim Woods, it's open to the public. Do you have problems with with humans impacting that environment?

SPEAKER_00 21:03

No, not too much. Um that a a place like Oppenheim, I think, is a is is a little more resilient than some of the more sensitive, you know, more sensitive remnant uh situations, right? Um if I were to manage, for instance, a remnant prairie, I probably wouldn't let people in it. Um so explain what a remnant prairie is it would be a lot more regulated, right? I'd be like, listen, a remnant situation is is is you know, we'll say historic, ancestral, pre-colonial. Okay. There's very little remnant habitat left in Indiana. Um and so when I think about remnant situations, I don't necessarily consider Oppenheim remnant. It's certainly old, right? And I also think that you know, it's a situation like that I think that it, you know, it can handle the amount of visitation that it gets. There are certain Things that I don't let, uh mountain biking, for instance, things that are going to disturb the soil. We try to mitigate the introduction of invasive species with bootbrush and signs and things like that. And I regularly, you know, patrol the trail to make sure that certain invasive species aren't in there and we work to manage them. Um, but you know, that's sort of that job is never done. That's just like making your bed or doing your laundry. It, it's, it's, that sort of vigilance is necessary anytime in any habitat that you manage. Um, but I think Oppenheim is fine with foot traffic and just average traffic. Would I let mountain bikes in? No. Do I let four-wheel, you know, like side by sides and things like that in? No. Right. Um, but people are welcome to visit that. On the other hand, there are certain situations where maybe I wouldn't let I'm I'm willing to take people in like a class or something like that. But as far as just general open to the public, no, no. Um, some of the wetlands that I manage and some of the some of the other areas that just are more prone to disturbance because of the soils that they have, the hydrology that it has, the plant and animal communities that are in there, um, they probably need a little to be a little more cloistered off and protected.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

So they're more sensitive to impact.

Protect, Anchor, And Restore Strategy

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. And and and like any of the remnant communities that we have, um, whether you're talking about prairie, um, I mean remnant ephemeral pools in forests, you know, any sort of remnant situation is also going to be, you know, sort of a reservoir of biodiversity. So another big part of my job is restoration work. Not only do I just take care of like a place like Oppenheim Woods, TNC, the nature conservancy, whom I work for, and uh my job in particular, we do a lot of restoration work, where, you know, I guess you could say the general strategy with the nature conservancy is to uh acquire a piece, uh a parcel of land and protect it that has a high conservation value. Maybe it has, you know, an undisturbed forest in it, or it has a creek in it that is of particular high quality and contains, you know, a good diversity of organisms. Or maybe it's a wetland that, for the same reasons, is largely, you know, intact hydrology, intract, intact, unrelatively undisturbed soils with a good diversity of organisms, right? So that's like your protection target. And then what we do is we build out from that, right? And try to restore as much as we can. It's not always possible. Oppenheim, for instance, you know, is kind of landlocked with Lake Tippecanoe in the south and the golf course on the north, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:43

And a road on the east, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Right. And so that's not always possible. Um, but you know, where we can do that sort of thing, we do a lot of that restoration work. And to your point about humans speeding up the life cycle, right? Um, that's another way that you can sort of speed up the um the maturation, the life cycle of something. You know, eutrophic like human-induced eutrophication is, you know, uh broadly speaking, I think generally speaking, a negative thing. Right, right. But, you know, human-induced diversification and restoration, you know, it's it's it's the same thing. We're pushing it f down the road faster. Nevertheless, it still takes a very long time.

Lost And Found: Rare Bog Plants

SPEAKER_03 25:28

So I know that you have discovered some plants that um I think the phrase that was used was extirpated.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Extirpated.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Yeah. Explain that.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Well, I didn't discover it, but I was with Scott namesnik. Um, Scott Nemesnik, the state botanist for the DNR, uh, a friend of mine. And we were in, you know, Birkett Bog here in Casciasco County, and we found uh a plant that had been listed as extinct, locally extinct in Indiana. Um, it's a plant that Scott had been looking for, I think for maybe 10, 15 years or more. Wow. Um, and uh we walked right by it. We had been in there doing botanical surveys, and I think it was maybe the second, maybe the first time Scott was in there with me. But we were in there doing some botanical surveys. It's a very nondescript plant. Um you wouldn't you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking specifically for it. But when you find it, because it just looks like grass, it's it's arrowgrass. The genus species is Shukzarea Pellustris. Um, when we just call it Shukzeria, it's not at all rare globally, it's very common in northern latitudes, so it's a sort of a more boreal species. But Indiana's for a lot of boreal species, northern Indiana is like the last stop before you're too far south. Okay. And this is one of them. And so we found we Scott actually found that plant. We were we had crossed by the area where he found it um three or four times that day, and we were actually on our way out of the bog, and I heard Scott exclaim out loud and turned around, and he's on his knees looking at something with a hand lens and uh, you know, chatting up a storm like a true botanist. Yeah. So we went back over, and sure enough, there it was. And then once we had our search image in our head of what this plant looked like, we started looking like, oh, it's everywhere. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. But it just with, you know, in a bog, it's a lot of peat moss and sphagnum, a lot of what you would call heathy plants or aracaceous plants. So, you know, there's there's there's like cranberries and there's um leather leaf, and there's a lot of plants that are really specific to a bog.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

And sometimes carnivorous plants. And carnivorous plants. Sundew and Venus flytrap.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

That's right. That's right. And well, yeah, it's we there are sundews, you know, in our bogs here in Indiana.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Okay.

Bogs, Fens, And Chemistry

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Uh pitcher plants as well. And so it was a really hard plant to see because it's very fine, grass-like, and there were other fine grass-like sedges all around it and some other things. But once we sort of got our search image, we're like, oh, there it is. It's literally everywhere in here.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

So I think for our listeners and viewers, Susie, we've talked about wetlands a number of times on this podcast series. And bogs are a specific type of wetland. So we've talked about wetlands. You could have a marsh, which is gonna be more herbaceous or green plants, you know, think cattails or those sorts of things. You can have um a swamp, which is usually more of a wooded wetland where you have um woody species like trees or uh buttonbush or something like that. Um, you can have a bog, which typically is gonna have that sphagnum mat on the top and some plants growing in it, sometimes even trees. Like, isn't there a spruce that can grow, like a black spruce? Oh, it's tamarack and there's some spruces that are good.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Red maples will pop up in them, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah. Um, but that bog is is very different in that typically you'll have rainwater, which is slightly acidic, comes to a depression in the landscape. And since then with that acidity, then you've got the sphagnum, which reinforces the acidity. And so only certain plants and animals probably will live in the bog. We've talked about fens on this uh podcast as well. That's more where you have groundwater coming out, which is gonna have a higher pH. And so that would be a different sort of a wetland than a bog, which is gonna have a more acidic pH. But yeah, talk about what would be some of the uh amphibians and reptiles that you'd find around a bog.

Reptiles And Amphibians Of Peatlands

SPEAKER_00 29:45

I mean, you would find so specifically in bogs, like what I might consider ones that, you know, of course you're gonna see garter snakes, you would see decay snakes, right? You would see snapping turtles and painted turtles and all your normal guys, but you could see those in lakes and pretty much anywhere, too. Um, in a bog, you know, in Indiana, you would expect to see maybe some rare things, spotted turtles being one. Um, blanding's turtles, they're not bog really totally localized to bogs, but they would utilize bogs as well. Uh eastern Massasaugas um could be found in a bog.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Um, that's is that a rattlesnake?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

It's a rattlesnake. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

And that's one of our few venomous snakes in this area, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

It is. And it's the only venomous species in north in northern Indiana. Okay, ranging up into all the way through the lower peninsula of Michigan and up into like, you know, on southern Ontario.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

I've heard people talk about timber rattlesnakes, are those? Southern Indiana. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

You know, uh especially in like Brown County.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Okay.

When Fens Become Bogs

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Um, but you know, you you know, uh you would see eastern Massaugas, um, they would also be in fens as well. And so the thing is, you'd mentioned fens, bogs and fens, while they have different, we'll say hydrologies, different water sources. A bog is isolated from um the groundwater and it's rainwater fed. It typically doesn't have an inlet or an outlet, it's just basically a bowl that fills with rainwater, right? Um, fens are related to bogs, and fens can transition in the bogs as well. Um, so as fens age, get back to life cycles, as fens age and they start to, you know, fens also they're both called peatlands, meaning they have sphagnum moss or peat. Um as fens get older, they can actually deposit enough organic peat down that that isolates them from uh the groundwater. And at that point, then you would see a shift in the chemistry of the fen from you know being circumneutral or just around pH of seven, or you know, uh slightly more alkaline, we'll say, um, to now it start to transition because of the physiology and the chemistry of the plants and the deposition of organic material, you could start to see a transition to a more acidic pH of the water. And so the fence starts to isolate itself from the groundwater and the chemistry starts to change and it can actually transition into a bog or a more bog-like condition. Actually, Burkett has a good a good example of that.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Now, will a bog carry it to its conclusion like I did for a lake? Would a bog eventually f get enough of that moss build up that it goes to a wet prairie and a forest and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, but it'll definitely eventually it would, right? So, you know, the bog is this depression, it's it's cut off from the groundwater, it's precipitation filled, um, it starts to develop, you know, peat mats. If you could think about like um it's I'm trying to think, I'm trying to illustrate something. If I could draw it, it would be easier, right? But if you picture a bowl, right? Yeah. And the vegetation starts to encroach from the outside. So the bog, the bog, a lot of bogs, um, will have like open water in the middle, right? Um, but then there will be this floating sort of veget veg mat, right? You know, vegetation and then growing vegetation on top. And so it kind of gets like a quaking bog. Yeah. It can be pretty soft.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

I love taking my students out on bogs because it's uh it it's it's not as uh common anymore for people to have water beds. Yeah. But it it's but I would imagine it would be like walking on a waterbed because you have the sphagnum and it's floating, the mat is floating on the water. So as you walk and as other people are walking around you, you can sort of feel waves in it, and sometimes there's weak spots, and the students will fall in, and it's so exciting. Yeah, yeah.

Walking On Quaking Peat

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I've worked a lot in those situations. Like I remember the first time I went into a fen that was like this, fence can be bagged like that too. Yeah. Um, yeah, I was falling through and falling through, and I was all alone and I was getting pretty frustrated, and I was looking for a snake, and I wasn't finding it. And I I had never been in the fen before. I was just told, go here and look for the snake. And I said, All right. And uh I kept falling through and I kept pulling myself up on these shrubs that were growing in the fen.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

So when you fell through, like how deep, how do you fall?

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Well, I always tell the students, put your arms out when you fall out because else you could just keep going down into that opening layer.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

I mean, you know, I I've gone through, you know, uh up to like my armpits before. Yeah, yeah. You know, but I'm pulling myself out on these shrubs, and it turns out the shrubs are poison suing. I was just wondering about what use of the So like I didn't realize halfway through the day, I've been pulling myself up, and then I realized what I was grabbing on to and I was like, oh, and I had and I I got a pretty bad case of poison suicide.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Because there's a higher urosol, that that alcohol in there that causes the allergic reaction than poison ivy and poison super. Oh, yeah. So absolutely. It's a much worse allergic reaction. It's a worse allergic reaction.

Why Bogs Are Off-Limits

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Um, but the bog eventually, right, it will, as it deposits more um, just like a lake, as more organic material gets deposited, it starts to close off that open water at the top. Um, and eventually it just keeps depositing more and more organic material. It becomes more and more solid. Trees take root. Once trees start to take root and woody species start to take root, they suck up a lot of water. And so they start to dry things out. And I mean, this takes thousands of years. Um, it transitions from, you know, a wetland into more of an upland situation. Um, yeah. And and and at Birkittbog, there had been studies done, um, and uh some boring had been done at Birkittbog. The organic peat layer at Birkett is I think almost 16 or 17 meters deep. Wow. Which that's uh 40, what? Jeez, oh man, that's gotta be close to 50 feet, right? Wow, yeah. And is there still water like open water down below that? I don't know. I don't know. Okay, I didn't I um Sweinhart did those did those studies, and I have the report for um Burkett. Yeah, but um, you know, these I think these were done maybe like 15, 20 years ago. Okay. Um, and uh I don't know exactly how saturated things are underneath, but I know that like a lot of times bogs will have a moat around the outside of them that makes them difficult to enter. Um, and Burkett is no ex no exception. And so you have to wade through this very deep, very muddy moat. Um, and then you climb out onto the the peat. But once you're out on the peat, it's really stable. But like Elkhart bog that I I had mentioned, you know, uh north of here, uh up in Elkhart, um, that one is really soft. Uh and I don't know, I don't know how much it has attributed to alter hydrology or not. I I imagine some of it is, but um, that one's very soft. Uh Rich Dunbar and I, Rich Dunbar was the ecologist for DNR, Northeast Regional Ecologist for DNR, retired recently. Um, I remember we were out there a few years ago, and it took us like two hours to walk out 70 meters and turn around and come back because we were just like wobbling to find those.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

The video games like Mario Brothers, where you're like the little character and you have to jump on a platform, and then it as soon as you jump on it, it starts to sink, and so you got to jump to the next platform. Right. That can be what it's like on a bog sometimes. Absolutely. It starts sinking, you gotta quick get to the next one. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Okay, so we want to make sure that your our listeners and viewers understand bogs, burkett bog is not accessible for the public. It is not because it's so special, it's not something you want to open up to the public. It's fragile, right?

Carnivorous Plants And Nitrogen

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Right. I mean, also just legally, it's totally landlocked by our private property owned by neighbors.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

So whereas Elcart is one that would be accessible for the public to go see, and there's a platform and a boardwalk so people can interact with it without negative implications.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

That's right. And the thing about like when we talk about sensitive, I mean, fens and bogs, wetlands, prairies, a lot of these places, more so than forests, are really, really diverse, you know, scenario, diverse habitats. Um, you know, and if they're not super diverse, like not all burkett's not necessarily super diverse, but a lot of times almost everything that's in a bog is rare because it's specialized to the chemistry and the conditions of that bog. Right. So a lot of times, you know, like the plants, the sphagnum, the leather leaf, which is a low-growing shrub, that arrowgrass that I mentioned. Um, there's bog rosemary, which looks like rosemary, doesn't smell like rosemary, it's not an herb, it's just called Andromeda, it's uh is the genus. It's uh, you know, it's just a shrub. That's a bog obligate species. When you get, and there's sedges that are basically bob bog obligate, like few-fruited sedge, keryx oliga, oligosperma, which is few-fruited sedge. Um, so there's a lot of species that are adapted to be in that low pH, low nutrient, like stressful environment. And that's the only place that they can outcompete other plants and animals. And so that's where they're found.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

And that's why we think bogs are common places for some of these carnivorous plants as well. Because the carnivorous plant, meaning it's eating insects or small amphibians or something, because it's using those animals as an extra nutrient source, because there's not a lot of nutrients around it in the in the environment that it can soak up through its roots.

Pitcher Plants As Insect Archives

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Yeah, and and nitrogen's the big one. So because in like a peatland, like a fen or a bog, because you also see carnivorous plants in in fens, um, especially in like rich fen situations where they're it's really close to the water table and it's really close to the soil, uh like the organ the mineral soil. Um they're they're low nutrient situations, and that the main nutrient there in terms of availability is nitrogen. And so nitrogen is in the tissues of plants and animals. It's a common component, especially of proteins. But because you don't get a lot of decay in a bog, and said you just get this stacking of organic material that basically, for lack of a better word, is mummified, right? In the soil, that nitrogen is never let loose. And so the plants that are adapted to um, like carnivorous plants that are adapted to get nitrogen from other sources, what they do is, you know, like a pitcher plant, you know, I don't know, uh a bee or something like that, is around the edge of the cup on the pitcher plant, it falls down inside, it drowns, it slowly decays. As it decays in the water in the basin of the pitcher plant, it releases the nitrogen. And so the plant can then acquire that nutrient to build protein and and you know, to metabolize.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yeah, those pitcher plants I think are just amazing because they've they've got, so it's a it's a pitcher vat, sort of as you were saying, digestive juices down in the bottom. It's got sort of a little flap over the top, almost like a little umbrella, to keep rainwater from kind of filling it up and diluting it. And as the insect goes in, there's hairs that are pointing downward, almost like one-way valves, so the insects can't crawl back out. There's sort of a waxy covering that kind of flakes off and makes the insect fall down into the bottom, and then it digests it down there. I just think it's a fascinating sort of a plant plant. Um, really cool.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

And about how much time, you said it takes a very long time for a bog to mature that that might then allow it to be something different than a bog. Can we point to any places in our community where that's already happened?

Land Acquisition And Partnerships

Visiting Oppenheim: Access And Trails

SPEAKER_00 42:27

I'm sure, but I don't know. There's so little natural like in Casyasco County, there and in Indiana in general, there's very little original state land, right? There are, I guess, uh markers, it will say historical markers, evidence of what things were. We talk about soils. You can look at just general like land form and you can get an idea of glacial deposits and things like that. So there's evidence that that stuff was there, but as far as a specific example on the ground, I can I I can't really think of one because if it had been converted, right, if a lake had succeeded into a grassland or a forest or a bog or something like that, it probably would have been cleared and developed. And and and with the picture plants, too, another thing that I don't recommend doing, um, but I see a lot of picture plants in my work. Um if you find a picture that has sort of like fallen off, you know what I mean? Um, because it's a it's a modified leaf. Um, and so they die, you know, it's a part of the plant, it drops, it gets old and drops off and dies. If you find one, and if I find one in the field and I break it open, you could it's just like an owl pellet, there's just all these pieces of insect down. Oh, all the pieces, all the pieces of exoskeletons. So I imagine if I were an entomologist, you know what I mean? Right, and and had a better handle on identifying insects based on the individual little components. Components of them. I imagine I could treat a pitcher plant like an owl pellet, you know, and pull it apart and see what was in there.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

You could do like an insect survey based on what's in the bottom of the pitcher plant. Yeah, I bet you could.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

I don't know if it would be more cost-effective than just doing eDNA in this day and age, but it would be an interesting experience. Yeah, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 44:19

Are there lands in Casciasco County or any of the counties that you're serving that you hope to acquire?

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Uh we the Nature Conservancy generally does not talk about things like that. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Um because the price would suddenly go up then.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Yeah. And also we don't like to count our chickens before they're hatched, right? So there are properties across, you know, Indiana that we have eyes on. Um, and Calciasco County is an area of our focus.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

So, for example, the Oppenheim Woods, you acquired because Mr. and Mrs. Oppenheim chose to gift that to the nature conservancy before they died. And they had a relationship, they understood what nature conservancy was about.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Plus, they were very good stewards of that land that they cared for 60 years before they died.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

So that that's one way you acquire land.

Keep Trails Clean Of Invaders

SPEAKER_00 45:17

That's one way is through bequeathal and thing and personal relationships and donations from, you know, I guess conservation-minded landowners. Right. And another way is, you know, to just outright purchase something, um, which, you know, we recently did over in in Stubent County. We purchased 265 acres of uh 255 acres of forest, old field, and agricultural land that's directly adjacent, touches one of our preserves. Okay. So you're so attacking on growing it out. Um, you know, and so we'll just straight up purchase. Another way that we we protect is to work through partnerships. You know, we don't we don't necessarily purchase and then sit on the land and own it forever. We transfer a lot of stuff. So like other regional land trusts, other regional conservation partners, including DNR, uh Acres, uh, you know, um Sycamore Land Trust, there's a lot of land trusts in Indiana, niches. Um, you know, a lot of times we'll assist them. Um, and so, you know, we might purchase something, say, hey, we'll assist with this. We got the money to do it, it's an important place. And then at some point in the future, you know, maybe immediately or some point down the road, we transfer that over to them. When we do a transfer like that, though, it has to we emphasize that it's important that the organization or the group that is taking over the land has the capacity and the intent to manage it long term. You want it to be sustainable. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:49

So people want to go visit Oppenheim Woods. It's north of Tippecanoe off of Keloramo Drive.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

And there's a lovely parking space there. You got designated as a bicentennial. There's some kind of special designation for that.

Weed Wranglers And Spring Pulls

SPEAKER_00 47:06

It was so so um the parking lot was funded with bicentennial funds in 2016. We applied for a bicentennial grant to basically make that improvement for visitors. Because at that point before then, there was no real public access for our neighbors or any other individual interested individuals unless they walked in from Pat Oppenheim's old place, right? And and they were a direct neighbor of ours with a relationship to the current landowner, the current owner of the Oppenheim's home. So, in order to make that more accessible, you know, we applied for a grant. We made the intention to create a parking area suitable for, you know, three to five cars. Not a lot of visitation. And we do get a, but but we do get a lot of local interest and a lot of local uh, you know, visitation to that site. I think a lot of the neighbors um along Calorama Road, they really enjoy just walking down the road, um, you know, and hopping on the trail and going for a run or going for a walk. And it has uh, you know, in the neighborhood, you know, it's it's it's everybody's private little preserve. I think a lot of people think of it, and that's fine. Um, you know, it has an outstanding spring wildflower display.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Best best stand of trilliums.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

It it has so many trilliums, and you know that you're well familiar with that. Um, it's it's if you go in there at the right time in you know the back half of April, it looks like there's snow on the ground in areas because there's so many trilliums. Yeah. So it is it is outstanding to look at at that time. It's it's it's nice all year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:43

Is the um pathway gravel dirt? Is there boardwalk area?

SPEAKER_00 48:50

There's no boardwalk, it's all natural service. Um, the Oppenheims maintained like mode paths through the area. We shuttered some of those. Um, there were multiple pathways that sort of crossed through the middle of the preserve. And we decided to instead sort of shutter those and close those, no longer maintain them and maintain basically a loop around the around it. So, you know, number one, that helps protect the interior of the preserve, right? It gives the plants and animals a little bit of breathing room, so to speak. It cuts down on, I guess, pathways or vectors that invasive plants can get in, right? Um, and you know, to that extent, then when you're at a nature preserve, you know, um, you know, it's important to check if they get a boot brush, use that bootbrush and stay on the trail. Because the manager of that nature preserve, the manager of that park, you know, that then they can focus. It's it's it's it is time-intensive and arduous work to work on invasive species. And if you can help the land manager out or the caretaker for a site by staying on designated pathways, they can focus their attention on those designated pathways to detect, you know, invasion, you know, by you know, something new or something particularly bad.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

So you're saying somebody maybe has a seed in the tread of their shoe or stuck to their clothing, which many plants have adaptations, so their seeds are sticky in that way. Um, if someone's way in the interior, away from a trail, that seed falls off and it starts growing an invasive species that then starts multiplying. It might take the land manager years to see and then it's a real problem.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

Are there partners that you have that help you maintain it?

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah. So we work with a local, um, we work with a local group, uh Quip, which is a local Sisma, which is, I can't remember what the acronym stands for. And it's there's weed Wranglers. They're weed Wranglers, right? So there's acronyms upon acronyms, right? So Indiana has SICKEM, which is you would think I would I would remember this, but I never do, because it used to be Southern Indiana.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

So we want you, if you're interested in learning more about that, you can look at one of our past episodes with Duke and Julian. Yes.

Closing Thanks And How To Help

SPEAKER_00 51:10

And Casciasco County has a very active group of we weed wranglers um called Quip, K W I P P. Um, we do an annual weed wrangle at Oppenheim Woods. This year we're doing it, I think I'd have to look, but it's April 24th, somewhere around there. It's usually like the toward the end of April. Um, and uh, you know, they've been a great help. We go in and we we the main management concern in Oppenheim are invasive shrubs. And so we go in and we do a lot of hand pulling of shrubs.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Asian honeysuckle.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Asian honeysuckle, burning bush, burning bush is a big one, uh, Barbary. And all of these are common ornamental plants. And, you know, they're found, you know, in the in the landscaping of our neighbors there. And so as you mentioned earlier with the birds dispersing cherry seeds, you know, burning bush, um, honeysuckle, autumn olive, all of those things produce fruit that are eaten by birds, calorie pear. Um, and then they disperse that across the landscape. So, but the Quip, the local, the local weed wranglers, they have the local sisma has really, really helped me tackle, you know, an ever-expanding area of shrubs. It's it's it's amazing. We've done this. I think this will be the fourth year that we've done it. And I mean, you can just tell where we've been working and where we haven't been working. And we don't use any herbicide during this. It's not a good time to apply herbicide to shrubs in the early spring. So um, you know, we go in and we just manually pull them up. Uh the soils are such, and usually the ground is soft enough that you can pull up a burning bush or something like that with no problem.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Yeah, and we've uh sponsored and partnered with that organization a number of times uh over the last few years. And so uh if folks are interested in helping with those, they can uh look at our events on the Lily Center website and we can keep people uh informed about helping with that in the future.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, they're they're a great group. It's a lot of fun. I try to get out with them. It's crazy because I do that for a living, but then I go help people in my spare time once in a while to go do it too. But uh, you know, it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

Nathan Herbert, we sure appreciated you being here today to inform us about Oppenheim Woods and Birkett Bog and all of the interesting features that we have that we're blessed with. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Thanks for having me. This is great. I I could go for hours if you let me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 53:46

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SPEAKER_02 53:59

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SPEAKER_03 54:13

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