Category: News

George Barnes | Worcester Telegram & Gazette | January 2, 2020 https://www.telegram.com/news/20200102/central-mass-hikers-bikers-skaters-swing-into-2020 With the sun breaking through Wednesday morning, people found opportunities to get off their couches and head outside to celebrate New Year’s Day with first day hikes, skating, and even bicycling. At the Wachusett Reservoir, more than 100 people joined reservoir rangers Andy Leahy and Sean Flood in a hike from Gate 22 near the West Boylston-Boylston town line. The large group enjoyed a two-mile round-trip hike to the South Bay area of the reservoir, which looks across to Dover Point. It was one of 10 hikes held by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation’s First Day Hikes Initiative. The national effort to get people to enjoy state parks got its start in Massachusetts in 1992. Another Central Massachusetts hike was held at the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park at River Bend Farm in Uxbridge. A smaller group took to bicycles for the 2nd Annual Worcester County Women’s Cycling Ride....

Editorial Board | Greenfield Recorder | December 5, 2019 https://www.recorder.com/Kestrel-Land-Trust-120319-30968163 From atop Mount Sugarloaf, farmland stretches as far as the eye can see — to the distant Seven Sisters range in Hadley and beyond. It’s a beautiful landscape that’s for the most part untouched by large swaths of commercial development. Wooded areas and open spaces afford opportunities for recreation and provide a buffer for busier economic hubs to the south. This isn’t a coincidence. The Pioneer Valley’s residents have historically valued its natural landscape and, as such, have taken steps to protect it. Through concerted conservation efforts over decades by a host of local agencies, including the Amherst-based Kestrel Land Trust, thousands of untouched acres throughout Western Massachusetts provide refuge for native wildlife. The work continues today. Soon, there will be an additional 120 conserved acres in Whately. The land, known as the Whately Center Woods Project, encompasses Westbrook, Chestnut Plain and Haydenville roads. According to the Kestrel Land Trust, the agency working on the project,...

America's State Parks | StateParks.org What better way to kick off the New Year than by getting a jump start burning off those extra holiday calories in the great outdoors? On New Year’s Day, America’s State Parks have all 50 states offering free, guided First Day Hike Programs. These hikes provide a means for individuals and families to welcome the coming year in the outdoors, exercising and connecting with nature. Last year nearly 55,000 people rang in the New Year, collectively hiking over 133,000 miles throughout the country on the guided hikes.  Numerous others hiked state park trails throughout the day. The guided First Day Hikes are led by knowledgeable state park staff and volunteers.The distance and rigor vary from park to park, but all hikes aim to create a fun experience for the whole family.People are invited to savor the beauty of the state park’s natural resources with the comfort of an experienced guide so they may be inspired to take advantage of...

Alex Brown | The Pew Charitable Trusts | December 3, 2019 When Alabama closed Roland Cooper State Park in 2015 because of budget cuts, entrepreneur Warren Meyer saw an opportunity. Meyer runs Recreation Resource Management, a concession company that maintains campgrounds, builds cabins and provides amenities at state parks and U.S. Forest Service sites around the country. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources awarded the company, known as RRM, a contract to run the park on the agency’s behalf. The campgrounds, cabins and bathrooms reopened in 2016 for the anglers, campers and birders who visit the 236-acre park along the Alabama River. “We were able to reopen the park within a year after it closed, and RRM has been running it ever since and doing a fantastic job,” said Rob Grant, assistant director of Alabama’s State Parks Division. “It’s a net profit for us, and we were losing money there before.” Meyer advocates for increased privatization on state and federal land. He...

Barbara Moran | WBUR | November 26, 2019 https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/11/26/transforming-cranberry-farmers-wetlands-cape-cod Alex Hackman picks up a shovel and digs in to what used to be a cranberry bog. Down through an inch or two of tough green cranberry vines, down into the sandy soil beneath. Down, down, down. "It's tough going," says Hackman, stopping to catch his breath. "This is, you know, a century of effort by the prior farmers to have this beautiful dense layer of cranberry vines." Hackman is a restoration ecologist with the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration. He runs a state program dedicated to turning cranberry bogs back into wetlands. The state program partners with the UDSA's Wetland Reserve Easement Program, which has been around for decades. But lately there's been an uptick of interest from local farmers, says Brian Wick, executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association. That's because the cranberry business has been tough in recent years, with prices driven down by competition from Canada and Wisconsin, and the trade war with...

Jon Waterman | Opinion - The New York Times | November 22, 2019 CARBONDALE, Colo. — Deep inside Alaska’s six-million-acre Denali National Park and Preserve, I could see miles of space beneath my feet as I stood on the summit of the tallest mountain in North America. The startling view from the 20,310-foot Denali of rugged wilderness spreading out in all directions, plus the challenge of climbing it, were just two of the many wonders and adventures that I’ve experienced in America’s national parks. I recently finished writing a book for National Geographic, “Atlas of the National Parks,” based on extensive research, a lifetime of exploring the parks and several years in the 1980s working as a ranger in two of them, Denali and Rocky Mountain in Colorado. I meant the book as a celebration of the 103-year-old national park system, and it is. But what I also discovered was an operation in deep trouble, with some parks degraded by ruinous overcrowding; invasions of nonnative plants and animals that are...

Guest blog by NepRWA Board Member and Sharon Resident, Paul Lauenstein | Neponset River Watershed Association | November 5, 2019 https://www.neponset.org/happenings/neprwa-blog/rattlesnake-hill-in-sharon-has-been-spared-from-development/ On November 5, 2019,  Sharon Town Meeting voted to use Community Preservation Act funds and a grant from the state to purchase and preserve most of this 337-acre parcel of natural open space, which has been classified as Priority Habitat by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (NHESP). Rattlesnake Hill’s granite dome rises to an elevation of 431 feet, affording views of Boston and Cape Cod. Parallel scrape marks in the bare granite at the summit are evidence that glaciers up to a mile thick advanced and retreated over Massachusetts during the last ice age. Rattlesnake Hill adjoins Borderland State Park. Together, they comprise an area of almost 2,200 acres of contiguous natural open space. Vernal pools at Rattlesnake hill support a diverse ecosystem including rare Blanding’s turtles that migrate seasonally from the ponds at Borderland State Park to feed on amphibian eggs...

Clayton Harper | Arborway Matters | November 12, 2019 https://arborwaymatters.blogspot.com/2019/10/lemuel-shattuck-hospital-opportunity-to.html Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, which is slated for demolition soon, sits on land that was “Heathfield” - a scenic setting near the westernmost entrance to Frederick Law Olmsted’s masterpiece, Franklin Park, the crown jewel of the Emerald Necklace parks in Boston. Heathfield was once a grassy open field with full public access and walking paths surrounded by forest and rocky slopes, including “Rock Milton”, a large puddingstone cliff that rises above Scarboro Pond. Now it is covered with asphalt parking lot and sits behind a barbed-wire fence. The City of Boston agreed to convey more than 13 acres of Franklin Park to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1949 specifically for healthcare purposes, and in the seventy years since, the site has been used for the care of respiratory ailments, cancer patients, HIV care, psychiatric services, addiction treatment as well as Department of Corrections inmates with health issues....

Mia Cathell | The Daily Free Press | September 10, 2019 https://dailyfreepress.com/blog/2019/09/10/restoring-americas-wildlife-act-to-fund-massachusetts-conservation/ The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife announced its support for a bill in Congress that would provide $12 million every year to aid the state’s efforts to protect over 500 species, according to a Sept. 3 MassWildlife press release. The “Recovering America’s Wildlife Act” was first introduced to Congress in December 2017 by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), but was reintroduced this July after it stalled last year, according to the bill’s history on Congress’s website. Beginning in fiscal year 2020, the bill would amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act, which diverts funds from the general excise tax for wildlife conservation, to allocate an additional $1.3 billion for the Wildlife Restoration Fund, according to the bill. The bill also says it would allow states to determine how the funds will be used to protect fish and wildlife of the “greatest conservation need,” as well as for other conservation purposes. MassWildlife’s...

Chris Lisinski | State House News Service | South Coast Today | September 6, 2019 https://www.southcoasttoday.com/news/20190905/senate-votes-to-transfer-control-of-ernestina-to-mass-maritime BOSTON — Control of the historic Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey would move from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, which will maintain the vessel and use it for training, under a bill the Senate passed Thursday. The transfer comes as part of an effort to develop a long-term plan for preservation of the 125-year-old schooner, designated as the official vessel of Massachusetts. Restoration has been underway since 2015 thanks to $3.8 million in combined funding from the state, the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association and philanthropists Robert Hildreth and H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, according to Sen. Mark Montigny, who was the bill’s lead author. Under the legislation advanced Thursday (S 2328), the Massachusetts Maritime Academy will take over management of the vessel, though DCR will provide funding to help complete existing renovation contracts in fiscal year 2020. The academy must use it as a sail training ship for...

Alexander Nazaryan | Yahoo News | October 11, 2019 https://news.yahoo.com/campgrounds-in-national-parks-set-to-be-privatized-in-new-trump-plan-090019066.html WASHINGTON — A Trump administration advisory panel is recommending an ambitious plan to give private businesses greater access to national parks, according to a memorandum written by an advisory council for the Department of the Interior. Some price increases could also in the works for park visitors under the plan. Drafters of the plan say it amounts to little more than a much-needed modernization of aging infrastructure, and that the goal is to make national parks accessible to a younger, more diverse audience. Critics, on the other hand, see corporate influence at work. There are 419 national parks in the United States, from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska. All are overseen by the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department. That department is headed by David Bernhardt, a former Republican operative and corporate lobbyist who has made no secret of his desire to increase the...