Forest Experiment to Take Place in Richmond

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
September 2nd 2023

RICHMOND – A 45-acre site at the former de Coppet estate, now known as the Hillsdale Preserve, is part of a forest health project that will help researchers determine which tree species will best adapt to the hotter, drier conditions that come with climate change.

This is the first project in Rhode Island to partner with the North American experimental forest management network, Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change, or ASCC. 

Working with the ASCC on this project are the University of Rhode Island, the University of Connecticut and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Christopher Riely, Forestry Specialist and Research Associate at the University of Rhode Island, said the project, on the south side of Old Mountain Road, will involve removing some dead and live oaks, but many dead trees, or snags, will be left to provide wildlife habitat.

“Most of the snags, or the forest woody debris, are going to be left on site,” he said. “They provide different types of habitat when they’re standing and start to lose their branches, then they fall and provide habitat for other types of creatures and life cycles. It’s not a project to remove the dead trees. That’s not the focus of it at all.”

The forest restoration project involves using different management approaches in forest parcels in the United States and Canada to determine ways to help forests adapt to changing climate conditions.

“We know that our woods are a big part of the solution, the answer, if you will, to climate change, but they’re also stressed by some of the changes that we’re seeing, and just what those stresses are will depend on what ecosystem you’re in,” Riely said.

Some History of the Hillsdale Preserve

A successful investor and ardent conservationist, Theakston de Coppet died in 1937. His will stipulated that the land, at 156 Hillsdale Road, was to be managed, in trust, by the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, and that the property would eventually be transferred by the trustee to the state, after the General Assembly had passed a bill authorizing the state’s acceptance of the land and agreeing to the terms of the will, which read, in part,

“It is my special wish that the wilderness features within this  special area shall be kept unmodified; that this area shall be kept free of all commercial uses, and that the sanctuary and scientific values thereof shall always take precedence over purely recreational values; that the recreational uses of the area shall be so limited as to interfere with the major sanctuary and scientific purposes for which the reservation and sanctuary are dedicated.”

In 2014, after the death of the last beneficiary, whom De Coppet had stated could live in the lodge until his passing, the 1,825-acre parcel was transferred to the state along with a $20,000 annual donation for maintaining the property.

In 2019, DEM notified the Richmond Town Council that the state was planning to demolish the lodge, the only building on the property, which had been damaged by vandals.

The plan, at the time, was to document the historic features of the lodge and then tear it down, however, while it remains closed and in disrepair, the lodge is still standing.

Why Rhode Island?

DEM Chief of Agriculture and Forestry, Ken Ayars, said research on the Hillsdale property will guide management strategies for all state-owned forests.

“Our aim, in part, is to use it as kind of a research facility to test out techniques and strategies to better manage the forest that we do in the state, some 40,000 acres of land that we manage,” he said. “We envision de Coppet, or Hillsdale, being a place where we can experiment with refining the techniques that fit the changing climate, in particular. So, we first of all changed our approach and strategy to de Coppet and decided that that’s how we want to use it. It’s part of where I wanted to go in my new role in taking over forestry. It’s a beautiful place. It’s not taking away any of the other uses.”

The ASCC research project, Ayars said, fits well with DEM’s intended uses for the Hillsdale property.

“We were approached in this regard, to be part of the overall research that’s going on,” he said. “They wanted a Rhode Island site. We said, ‘let’s go with de Coppet,’ and that’s more or less how it came about.”

The Research Plan

Following established research protocols at all ASCC sites throughout North America, the land set aside for this forest restoration project will be divided into four areas, one of which, as the “control,” will receive no management whatsoever.

Riely explained that the remaining three, 10-acre parcels will receive varying degrees and types of interventions.

“One is termed the ‘resistance treatment,’ where you’re trying to hold the line against climate change as much as possible, promote forest health, productive growth of the trees,” he said.

“The next treatment is termed the ‘resilience to treatment.’ Here, it’s more like a rubber band – bend but not break, where either you may have significant ecological disturbances like the significant spongy moth outbreak that we had a few years ago.”

The last area is allocated to the “transition treatment,” which will include planting trees that are from more southerly climates

“Conditions are changing,” Riely said. “We’re not going to be able to maintain historic conditions because of these changing climate and weather conditions, so let’s do everything we can to proactively help the forest adapt to these future conditions. 

The Project Timeline

DEM Supervising Forester Will Walker, who is also involved in the research, said work at the site, scheduled for the end of August, has not begun.

“It hasn’t started yet,” he said. “…There’s a lot of extra work that’s involved and having these three areas manipulated and harvested - the resistance, the transition, the resilience - there’s a lot of groundwork, but then, you get equipment breakdowns. In this case, the logger is doing some maintenance on one of his machines and parts are hard to find.”

The goals of the project are to improve forest health, reduce the frequency and intensity of wildfires, provide habitat for wildlife and protect water quality.

Another objective of the research, Riely noted, is to make the findings available to everyone.

“This is something that other landowners in the region could learn from and emulate,” he said. “We want it to have utility to the typical landowners of the region, the family forest-owners in Richmond and elsewhere in South County and Connecticut, for example.”

Walker said the Hillsdale property offered exciting forest research opportunities.

“This parcel, Mr. de Coppet really set us up and we’re lucky to have it,” he said. “All of the other management areas, we follow rules and regulations, so on this [land] we can do what we want when it comes to scientific research, so yeah, we lucked out for sure.”