What Change!? Over Fifty Years of Nature Observation on Cape Cod

I have been very fortunate to have spend my entire career on Cape Cod. As a summer kid who never left, my working life included, research, education, advocacy and conservation.

The Cape I became aware of all those years ago, no longer exists. It has been replaced by and evolved into a very different mosaic of habitats inhabitant by an ever-changing mix of species. Some of the change is natural but some was brought on by more regional and global scale changes.

This program focuses on some of those change, some might be obvious, some maybe not so much. Birds have always been a good indicator of change. Populations come and go, some for cultural reasons, other because of habitat, still others because of climatic change.

Marine ecosystems also change. The Cape has typically been a barrier for the warmer water species to our south the colder water species to our north. The Cape is no longer the barrier it once was. We’ll see examples of some of those species.

What we observe as natural habitats, not be the case. Things change, species move, landscapes are altered, but nature persists. During this program we’ll see how it is all related.

Last, we take a quick look at some potential change looming on the horizon.