Outdoors in RI: Senior Travel Discounts, Alaska Drilling, Prudence Water, Wolves, and Garlic Time

Travel & accommodation discounts

National Park Service Senior Pass: For a one-time fee of $80, U.S. citizens or permanent residents aged 62 and older can obtain a lifetime Senior Pass. This pass grants access to over 2,000 federal recreation sites, including national parks and wildlife refuges.  NOTE:  During the government shutdown, there are no staff for the “toll booths” so all can drive in at no cost – attention leaf peepers!

Amtrak Senior Discounts: 10% discount on most rail fares to travelers aged 65 and older.

AARP – always take a look at the AARP website as hotel, car rental, etc. discounts are often promoted.

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Spooky suggestion: Get your garlic in the ground for Halloween!

URI gardeners say plant garlic this month for June harvest

 While gardeners across the region are closing up shop and putting away their gardening tools, University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners say fall is a great time of year to get some plants into the ground and plan for next year.

Cooperative Extension’s Kate Hardesty, of West Greenwich, R.I., says garlic is fun to plant at Halloween to enjoy at the June harvest. She also suggests carrots, radishes, leaf lettuce, and beans from seed as easy plants for novice gardeners to consider when looking at plant catalogs over the coming winter. “They’re easy to grow from seed,” she says.

Though Hardesty worked in the landscaping field for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic made Hardesty get out in her yard and put herself in the shoes, er, boots, of new gardeners.

“COVID gave me the space and time to spend hours outdoors after work at home,” she recalls.

Having once designed a garden for the series This Old House, Hardesty now practices what she preaches by planting both for herself and her family. “I am thankful to the pandemic for providing me the time and space to find and fall in love with this new passion of mine,” she says.

Hardesty is an educator with Cooperative Extension, which provides informal education and learning opportunities to people throughout the U.S. In Rhode Island, the program delivers science-based educational programs and services to help people in their daily lives in every corner of the state.

Woonsocket resident Georgia Young completed the URI Master Gardener program in 2021 and is another garlic fan, calling it a good project for new gardeners to try in the fall.

“If you have a piece of lawn you’d like to convert to native plants or a raised bed in the spring, start the process now with the ‘lasagna method,’” Young says. URI’s Gardening and Environmental Hotline can also talk you through the process and can be reached at 401-874-4836 or via email at gardener@uri.edu.

Elizabeth Leibovitz who oversees the Heber Youngken Medicinal Garden for the University’s pharmacy program says that “neck garlic” is typically grown in New England and many of its varieties are easy to grow. URI pharmacy students study garlic as a supplement in their program.

“Buy hard-neck garlic, the largest cloves you can find, from a farmers market,” she says. “Let the farmer know you are planning to plant it and they can help you find nice large healthy cloves. Orienting the clove with the pointy tip up (the future sprout) is essential, then mulch deeply. Garlic can be planted anytime the ground isn’t frozen.”

For further advice on planting garlic—or anything else—contact the URI Gardening and Environmental Hotline. Outside Rhode Island, look for your closest Cooperative Extension office.

Most importantly, URI Master Gardeners say there’s no need to be afraid of gardening.

“You can do it!” affirms Hardesty. “Just try, observe, and make adjustments as needed. Anyone can grow food!”

URI Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Program offers environmentally-friendly, science-based programs for garden enthusiasts of all levels. Questions? Email coopext@uri.edu or call (401) 874 -2900. Learn more at https://web.uri.edu/coopext/.

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Wolves at the coast: marine diets, ecosystem impacts – how gray wolves function within aquatic habitats

PHOTO – top of page: Patrick Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate at URI, is studying how gray wolves are hunting sea otters and what this dietary shift suggests about the species’ adaptations to a changing climate. (URI Photo / Anna Gray)

On Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, gray wolves are doing something unexpected: hunting sea otters. This surprising dietary shift appears to have notable implications for both ecosystems and wolf health, but little is known about how the predators are capturing marine prey. Patrick Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island, is researching these understudied behaviors of gray wolves.

Using a creative mix of approaches — including wolf teeth samples and trail cameras — Bailey is exploring how coastal gray wolves are using marine resources, what this suggests about their behavioral and hunting adaptations, and how these adaptations differentiate them from other wolf populations.

On land, gray wolves are known to play a vital ecological role because of their ability to regulate food webs. “We don’t have a clear understanding of the connections between water and land food webs, but we suspect that they are much more prevalent than previously understood,” says Bailey, a member of Sarah Kienle’s CEAL Lab in the Department of Natural Resources Science. “Since wolves can alter land ecosystems so dramatically, it is possible that we will see similar patterns in aquatic habitats.”

Teeth tell the tale

Now an endangered species, sea otters were abundant along the Pacific Coast until the fur trade during colonial expansion into the west decimated their numbers. As sea otter populations recover, wolves appear to be re-establishing a predator-prey relationship that may have existed long ago. Researchers are now investigating whether this relationship affects wolf behavior and the ongoing recovery of sea otters.

To better understand these dynamics, Bailey is conducting stable-isotope analysis on gray wolf teeth from museum collections and recently deceased wolves. Similar to tree rings, the wolves’ teeth contain layers of growth that reveal their dietary history. “If large enough, we can individually sample each of these growth rings to track an individual’s feeding patterns over time,” he says. “When we gather enough samples across individuals we can then analyze how prevalent these dietary trends are throughout a population.”

“Capturing and eating prey in the marine environment is very different from doing it on land,” adds Kienle. “We are super curious to see if these coastal wolves have behavioral adaptations that are different from terrestrial wolves.”

While there are over two decades of official reports of wolves consuming aquatic prey, many questions remain. “What hasn’t been explored, and what I am really interested in documenting, is how exactly wolves are able to capture sea otters,” Bailey says.

New tech, new clues

While the resolution of initial footage of wolf hunts was too low for detailed analysis, new trail cameras installed by Bailey on the Alaskan island this summer may finally capture the details of how wolves are hunting sea otters. “So far, we know that these wolves are consuming sea otters,” he says, “and we’re now staged to capture the details that have previously eluded us.” Bailey has trained a team of seven URI students to help analyze more than 250,000 images of wolf and sea otter activity captured since last December.

One of the challenges of conducting this research has been the wolves themselves, Bailey notes. Highly intelligent and elusive, they are notoriously difficult to study. “When you pair these traits with a landscape that is very rural and difficult to traverse, researching them becomes quite the undertaking,” Bailey says.

Prince of Wales Island was selected as the primary research site for Bailey’s fieldwork thanks to a collaboration with Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Gretchen Roffler and Michael Kampnich, a research technician who is local to the area. “I cannot emphasize enough how much these two have helped me,” Bailey says. “This project would not be possible without their input and guidance.”

“Kampnich has been an unbelievable resource for getting us acquainted with the island and its unique ecology,” he adds. “Working with locals is so important because they have decades of experience and perspective that we as outside researchers simply do not have.”

Roffler’s recent research on high levels of methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury, accumulated in sea otters signals potential concerns for how gray wolves’ diets might move that mercury up the food chain. Liver samples from aquatic gray wolves reveal mercury levels significantly higher than their inland counterparts — up to 278 times greater — raising concerns about long-term health effects. “Methylmercury accumulation can cause a suite of problems related to reproduction, body condition, and behavioral abnormalities,” Bailey notes.

East Coast directions

While currently focused on Alaskan wolves because resources are allocated to areas that have the highest probability of capturing data, Bailey hopes to eventually expand the behavioral aspect of his research to include the east coast.

“I’m including historical east coast wolves in a separate chapter of my dissertation comparing skull morphology between coastal and inland populations,” he notes. He’s currently working with skull specimens of wolves from regions of Canada, including Newfoundland and Labrador, shared with him by the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.

In the meantime, his research is ongoing and data collection is expected to continue over the next several years. He hopes to return to Prince of Wales Island for additional fieldwork next summer.

This story was written by Anna Gray in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.

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Infrastructure Bank Closes On $100,000 Loan For Prudence Park Water Association To Install New Pressure Tanks & Flow Meter

Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, the state’s central hub for financing infrastructure improvements for municipalities, businesses, and homeowners, has closed on a $100,000 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) loan with 100% principal forgiveness (i.e. a grant) to the Prudence Park Water Association for the installation of new pressure tanks and a new flow meter. Prudence Park Water Association is a small, non-profit public drinking water system located on the west side of Prudence Island. The system serves 15 service connections and supports a seasonal population of about 100 residents. Operated by a volunteer board of five members, the Association provides the only source of year-round potable water for households in the Prudence Park community.

“Many of Rhode Island’s smaller water systems, like the Prudence Park Water Association, do not have the financial resources needed to implement expensive system upgrades on their own,” said Bill Fazioli, Executive Director of Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank. “That is why we are pleased to provide this $100,000 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loan, which thanks to 100% principal forgiveness acts as a grant, to the Prudence Park Water Association to implement new pressure tanks and a flow meter. Upgrades that will help ensure the Association is compliant with state standards and able to serve the approximately 100 residents who rely on the system for safe drinking water.”

“With just 100 people it is very challenging for the Prudence Park Water Association to afford the many upgrades required to modernize our system,” said Board Chair Edward O’Rourke. “We want to thank the team at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank for working with us and for providing this $100,000 grant that will allow us to make necessary upgrades so we can continue to provide safe drinking water to residents who rely on our system.”

“This funding makes resources available to small public water systems, like the Prudence Park Water Association, for important infrastructure improvements that improve drinking water quality and protect public health,” said Director of Health Jerry Larkin, MD. “We are pleased to announce the award of this loan with our partners at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank.”

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US Dept. of Interior opens up Alaska to Oil Drilling

During an event with Alaska’s congressional delegation and Alaska’s governor, the Department of the Interior announced a sweeping package of actions to boost energy development, modernize land and resource management across Alaska, and improve public health and safety for Alaskans. These steps include reopening the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, completing right-of-way permits for the Ambler Road, moving forward with the King Cove–Cold Bay Road corridor through a land exchange, and providing land allotments for eligible Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans. Together, these actions reduce regulatory barriers, support local communities, and strengthen Alaska’s role in national energy security and economic growth. 

“From day one, President Trump directed us to unlock Alaska’s energy and resource potential while honoring commitments to the state and local communities,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. “By reopening the Coastal Plain and advancing key infrastructure, we are strengthening energy independence, creating jobs and supporting Alaska’s communities while driving economic growth across the state.” The Coastal Plain of Alaska holds some of the most promising untapped energy resources in the United States and plays a critical role in strengthening national energy security.

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