Saving Bell Cedar Swamp is within reach

North Stonington - From the spongy sphagnum moss carpeting the squishy, acidic soil, to the 15-foot-tall rhododendrons bursting with white blooms, to the ramrod-straight Atlantic white cedars seeming to touch the sky, the world of Bell Cedar Swamp feels like a place apart.

"It's one of the most rugged, wild places you can go in Connecticut," said Kevin Essington, advising that anyone who ventures in should wear waders. Now director of ocean and coastal conservation for the Nature Conservancy's Rhode Island chapter, Essington visited Bell Cedar Swamp several times in recent years while he headed the conservancy's Pawcatuck Borderlands Project, which seeks protection for a large area along the Rhode Island-Connecticut border.

To Duncan Schweitzer, president of the Avalonia Land Conservancy, Bell Cedar Swamp seems like a kind of primeval hollow, where he can imagine dinosaurs plodding between the oversized ferns. His fanciful vision notwithstanding, Schweitzer and the rest of Avalonia are nearing the end of a yearlong goal of making preservation of this rare parcel a reality.

About $25,000 remains to be raised of a total of $100,000 needed to purchase the 89-acre swamp and pay for a survey, title research and legal costs. The rest has been raised through grants from the state and from private nonprofit groups and donations from individuals. The Nature Conservancy has lent its support and expertise.

"We need to close by December, but we hope to do it sooner," Schweitzer said, referring to Avalonia's agreement with the family of the owner, the late Frank Hero of Norwich. "It's not just preserving a swamp, it's the living ecosystem that needs to be preserved and that we will work hard to manage."

That ecosystem - characterized by Atlantic white cedars and giant rhododendrons - is designated by state environmental officials as an "imperiled natural community" and a critical habitat that can support endangered, rare and uncommon plants and animals. They include the green adder's-mouth orchid, the nettled chain fern and the Hessel's Hairstreak, a seldom seen mint-green-and-brown butterfly.

On Monday, Schweitzer and James Cowen of North Stonington, a professional botanist and member of the Connecticut Botanical Society, explained the swamp's unique features as they meandered through the brambly understory and stepped gingerly across mucky passages, sometimes sinking ankle-deep into mud. No trails have been cut into the property, but the two know the area from numerous past visits.

The visit came two days after Cowen led about a dozen people on a botanical society-sponsored walk into the swamp to look for rare plant and animal life. Among finds were what an entomologist on the walk believed to be a bar-winged skimmer (a kind of dragonfly), a ghost moth and an especially large Atlantic white cedar with a trunk measuring 16 inches in diameter at shoulder height.

Cowen said the group was cataloguing its finds for Avalonia "and for public awareness."

"The more they know about it, the better," he said.

Bell Cedar owes its unique habitat to its topography and hydrology, explained Cowen, who is a wetland and soil scientist with Environmental Planning Service in North Stonington. It is a nearly level area surrounded by higher knolls characterized by sandy soils. Groundwater percolating up and rainwater draining down into the swamp collects there and drains slowly.

"The deep organic soils and the sphagnum act like a sponge, and they hold the water a long time," Cowen said, pointing out wetlands plants such as marsh St. John's wort, liverwort and golden thread as he sidestepped over a shallow pool. "Areas like this have tremendous value in a flood event, when all those pools and mounds keep the water from flowing out."

Habitats like these were never common, he said, but there were probably more of them before European settlers carved up the swamps into small woodlots. In wintertime, when the swampy areas were frozen, they would harvest the cedar, prized for its rot-resistant properties, for fence posts, shingles and other uses. Often, after the cedar was harvested, swamp maples would become the dominant species, Cowen said, and that is the far more common type of forest swamp in the state today.

Among the few habitats like Bell Cedar still intact are the Rhododendron Sanctuary in the Pachaug State Forest in Voluntown, an area in Avalonia's Pine Swamp Corridor in Ledyard and Ell Pond Preserve in Rhode Island, jointly owned by the Nature Conservancy and The Audubon Society.

Schweitzer said that once the purchase is complete, Avalonia will probably begin developing public access to the area. Most likely, it will involve building boardwalks across the wetlands.

Essington, of the Nature Conservancy, said he's "thrilled" Avalonia is close to completing acquisition of Bell Cedar Swamp. It will complement the protection of the conservancy's Appleton Preserve, on the swamp's northeast side, and it will add to the conservancy's goal since 2001 to have large blocks of contiguous open space set aside along the Connecticut-Rhode Island line.

The Borderlands project seeks to conserve important watershed areas and forest buffers, according to Misty Edgecomb, conservancy spokeswoman. To date, almost 50,000 acres in the two states are preserved as part of state forests and parks, either owned by local land trusts or private conservation groups such as the conservancy or protected with conservation easements. In the past year, Edgecomb said, the conservancy has acquired 137 acres in West Greenwich and Hopkinton, R.I.

While it will be a welcome addition to the Borderlands, Bell Cedar Swamp will be a significant conservation success in its own right, Essington said.

"It's an important habitat in and of itself," he said.

j.benson@theday.com