Raised in Westfield, Mass., in the late 50s/early 60s, Martha Kane knew instinctively from early childhood that things were not going well for many of the planet’s plants and animals. Environmentalists were few and far between and politicians had not yet instituted Earth Day, so most people were unaware of any serious problems with the way humans were interacting with the natural world. Young Martha decided she would become a scientist and do her best to help nature.
The problem with this decision was the Kane family didn’t have the resources to send her to college, but she had a plan. Starting with 6th grade she would get straight A’s in school so she could get a scholarship to college where she would get assistantships and do work-study programs. Things turned out even better when her excellent high school grades allowed her to participate in extra-curricular field studies in Westfield’s Educational Project to Implement Conservation (EPIC.)
One of EPIC’s instructors was Phil Stanton, an ornithologist and professor at Framingham State College. Stanton was impressed with the young woman who clearly had her heart set on a career in the natural world. Having work-study money to hire an assistant, he chose Kane to help with his various projects: getting endangered trumpeter swans to breed in captivity, and methods to save sea birds that get caught in oil spills. (Long before the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, oil spills were killing lots of birds.)
Working with Stanton allowed Kane to narrow her field of interest to birds. It is no surprise that she went on to obtain her B.S. in wildlife biology from Framingham State University, graduating in 1975 with a burning desire to do field work. Unfortunately, she discovered that in the 70s most wildlife agencies were opposed to women doing field work so she went back to school, earning an M.S. degree in natural resources management and environmental education in 1977 from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point.
Kane’s hope was, “To create a more environmentally literate citizenry that might take positive action to protect and conserve our natural resources.” From 1980 through 2019, she had a variety of jobs in North Carolina. She was an outreach specialist for public schools in Catawba County, an 8th grade science teacher in Alexander County, wildlife education specialist for the state’s coastal fish and game agency, lead educator for the North Carolina state parks system, and manager of Raleigh’s first nature preserve.
After retiring from this last position, Kane returned to her love of field research. Volunteering in many parks and golf courses in the Raleigh area, she monitored and maintained nest boxes for cavity-nesting songbirds and trained others to do so. She did bird counts and participated in the National Audubon Society’s climate watch program and was very active in the local raptor rescue, transporting injured hawks, owls and vultures for veterinary intervention before settling them in a rehab center. She did educational programs for the public using birds whose injuries were such that they could not be returned to the wild.
It would seem that life was quite rewarding for Kane but, in the fall of 2021, 350 acres of farmland and forest next to her home were razed to the bare ground to create a mega-housing subdivision. “It was heartbreaking to see all that wildlife habitat destroyed, all those native trees cut up to be used for wood pellets,” Kane said. She still suffers some PTSD when she remembers watching the trees coming down and seeing some of the animals killed. To top it off, with the trees gone and no erosion protection, the creek in her back yard flooded and she needed to take out FEMA flood insurance.
That was the final straw. Knowing that New England had better environmental protections for soil and water, Kane headed home. She found a little “fixer-upper” in Southwick that happens to be located one mile north of the Granby Land Trust’s Dismal Brook Wildlife Preserve. As Kane walked around the preserve, she noticed some nest boxes that were in disrepair. She had seen an online bird list with the Granby Land Trust’s expert birder John Weeks contact info on it. She contacted Weeks and said she would love to help with the nest boxes. Weeks put her in touch with the land trust’s Dave Emery and that started a new bluebird project. Emery made new boxes and installed them where Kane suggested, not only at Dismal Brook, but also at the Pelka fields across from the Seth and Lucy Holcombe Preserve and the Mary Edwards Mountain Preserve. She monitored all the boxes and wrote up a report for the land trust. So many birds fledged that the land trust approved an expansion of the program. Another local birder, Amy Woodman, got involved by monitoring boxes in three fields of the Holcombe Preserve while Kane continued to monitor in Dismal, Mary Edwards and Pelka.
Knowing that the folks at the Holcomb Farm Tree Trail might be interested in some advice with the bluebird boxes on their trail, Emery had the trail’s Eric Lukingbeal contact Kane. She had heard reports of rat snakes getting into some of the boxes at Holcomb and she had plenty of experience wrangling them in North Carolina, so she was eager to get started on the tree trail.
Bluebirds have many challenges on the tree trail: mid-summer mowing, house sparrows and house wrens and tree swallows compete for the boxes. Moving the boxes and installing protective tubing on the posts seems to have reduced the predation and more birds have fledged this year. Unfortunately, the tree swallows seem to be more successful than the bluebirds, but at this writing, it was hoped that the blues would return once the swallows departed.
Kane follows the NestWatch protocols of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, loading all the box information into a database that is available for scientists in this country and across the world. Other Cornell-hosted bird count programs for ordinary citizens add data that shows many bird populations are declining, many due to the effects of climate change. “If we know the status of our native birds, this tells us a lot about the health of our local and regional environments,” notes Kane.
In addition to all the bird box monitoring, maintaining a pollinator garden at her home, taking care of her two budgies, a parakeet and a “special needs” parrot, and making improvements to her fixer-upper, Kane does not have much time for anything else, although she does enjoy hiking with the Western Mass Hilltown Hikers and learning about the history of the land. Since her siblings live nearby, she is also enjoying the family activities that she missed while living in North Carolina. Kane treasures the friends she has made here, noting, “The folks at the Granby Land Trust and Holcomb Farm have the same love of nature and dedication to conservation that I have, so I always feel at home when I am on a GLT property or roaming around Holcomb Farm.”