I don't know Manchester all that well, but it seems to me that the city has plenty of big buildings and parking lots, and relatively little wildlife habitat.

That's true of most cities, I suppose, but I was sorry to hear that the city proposes to let developers put up a business and industrial park on 400 acres of land next to the protected Manchester Cedar Swamp Preserve. 

The New Hampshire chapter of the Sierra Club has joined the opposition to the project, and hopes to rally enough support to persuade officials to leave the area alone. The Merrimack Valley chapter's head, Pat Mattson, has a Web site detailing the project, and what's at state.

I've never been there, but the 600-acre Cedar Swamp sounds pretty neat. It's in the northwestern side of the city, an area known as Hackett Hill. Mattson's Sierra Club mailing says the area includes cedar swamps, giant rhododendrons, 300-year-old black gum trees and a stretch of Millstone Brook.

Mattson describes the adjacent 400-acre area owned by the city as "nearly completely forested - largely by hemlock, oak and birch trees."

"It is dotted by vernal pools,  and is habitat for numerous species of mammals," she writes.

"The development plans for the business park call for the City's property to be deforested and to contain multi-storied buildings accompanied by huge parking lots."

Mattson doesn't mention it, but I learned from reading David Carroll that vernal pools and such uplanded wooded habitat is intimately linked to swampland, and crucial to turtles, salamanders, frogs and the like, which need the seasonal pools to breed, safe from the predations of fish. Besides being pretty cool in and of themselves, those species in turn help support all those bigger furry creatures.

As you can tell, I'm no expert. Don't know much about biology. Given a choice between buildings and parking lots, and trees and vernal pools, though, I prefer the latter. We have plenty of buildings, and we can always make bigger ones. We can't build a forest, or a swamp.