![]() ![]() The climate that we used to have here in New England has moved north to the point where it’s now in Quebec.” Rock, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. “In the ’50s and ’60s, 80 percent of world’s maple syrup came from the U.S., and 20 percent came from Canada,” said Barrett N. “How can you have the state of Vermont and not have maple syrup?” “It’s within, well, probably my lifetime that you’ll see this happen,” Professor Vogelmann said. Perkins and Tom Vogelmann, chairman of the plant biology department at the University of Vermont, said that while new sap-tapping technology is helping sugar makers keep up syrup production, for now, at some point the season will become so short that large syrup producers will no longer get enough sap to make it worthwhile. There are projections that say over about 110 years our climate will be similar to that of Virginia.”ĭr. Perkins said, “there may be very few maples here, mainly oak, hickory and pine. Over the long haul, the industry in New England may face an even more profound challenge, the disappearance of sugar maples altogether as the climate zone they have evolved for moves across the Canadian border. ![]() We are at this point convinced that it is climatic influence.” “We have eliminated all of those various factors. “We had this long list of factors we started with that could possibly explain it,” Dr. Perkins studied the records of maple syrup production over the last 40 years and found a fairly steady progression of the maple sugaring season moving earlier and earlier, and also getting shorter. “It appears to be a rather dire situation for the maple industry in the Northeast if conditions continue to go toward the predictions that have been made for global warming,” said Tim Perkins, director of the Proctor Maple Research Center at the University of Vermont.ĭr. Since 1971, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, winter temperatures in the Northeast have increased by 2.8 degrees. ![]() While some farmers and other Vermonters suggest the recent warm years could be just a cyclical hiccup of nature or the result of El Niño, many maple researchers now say it seems more like a long-term trend. There is no way to know for certain, but scientists are increasingly persuaded that human-caused global warming is changing climate conditions that affect sugaring. How many winters are we going to go with Decembers turning into short-sleeve weather, before the maple trees say, ‘I don’t like it here any more?’ ” “But the way I feel, we get too much warm. Morse, drilling his first tap holes this season in mid-February, as snow hugged the maples and Vermont braced for a record snowfall. “You might be tempted to say, well that’s a bunch of baloney - global warming,” said Mr. Morse tapped his trees in February and still missed out on so much sap that instead of producing his usual 1,000 gallons of syrup, he made only 700. The maple’s biological clock is set by the timing of cold weather.įor at least 10 years some farmers have been starting sooner. Morse, 58, who once routinely began the sugaring season by inserting taps into trees around Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March, and collecting sap to boil into syrup up until about six weeks later. “We can’t rely on tradition like we used to,” said Mr. Warmer-than-usual winters are throwing things out of kilter, causing confusion among maple syrup producers, called sugar makers, and stoking fears for the survival of New England’s maple forests. Morse calls the Venus de Maple.īut lately nature seems to be playing havoc with Mr. Morse’s family has been culling sweet sap from maple trees, a passion that has manifested itself not only in jug upon jug of maple syrup, but also in maple-cured bacon, maple cream and maple soap, not to mention the display of a suggestively curved tree trunk Mr. One might expect Burr Morse to have maple sugaring down to a science.įor more than 200 years, Mr. ![]()
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