By Land Protection Director Scott MacFaden
We live in an age of superlatives, many of them empty, embellished or completely unwarranted. However, on occasion, we at Wildlands Trust feel it’s appropriate to indulge in a superlative or two. One such occasion occurred on June 29, when we acquired 975 acres of Community Preservation Act (CPA) Conservation Restrictions (CR) from one of our most important conservation partners, the town of Plymouth.
The completion of the restrictions is the culmination of years of proactive efforts by the town to use the resources provided by the CPA to invest in open space protection. Across multiple years and numerous town meeting cycles, the town successfully advanced dozens of open space acquisitions to completion, encompassing a wide variety of landscapes, viewsheds and wildlife habitats, including globally rare habitats such as pine barrens. Equally important, almost every acquired property helps to protect Plymouth’s sole source aquifer, one of its most priceless natural resources.
Once a property has been acquired, the CPA’s stipulations require towns to place permanent restrictions on them. Nonprofit conservation organizations like Wildlands Trust are qualified to hold such restrictions and one of the most important services we provide to communities in our coverage area is working with them to hold CPA CR’s. We value all of our municipal partners, but we especially value our relationship with Plymouth, our hometown and the largest town by area in the Commonwealth.
In keeping with typical practice, we initially set out to draft CR’s for each individual property the town had acquired; however, with so many properties in play, it was advisable to seek a more efficient approach to advancing and completing the needed CR’s. With that in mind, we reached out to John Gioia, the principal CR reviewer for the Commonwealth’s Division of Conservation Services, and he provided a sample of a CR completed elsewhere in the state that had bundled numerous properties into a single document. As an organizing principle, this approach offers many advantages and efficiencies, including allowing for the preparation and advancement of several CR documents instead of over a dozen individual CR’s.
While enamored of the template John provided to us, we elected to take it a step further and create three distinct “Super CR’s” , with each Super CR including properties possessing similar geographic scale and landscape features.
These “Super” CR’s include:
The view from Hio Hill, one of Plymouth’s highest-elevation landforms.
Forest/Large Landscape Block CR | 786.6 acres: This CR includes multiple properties of larger scale, including a 375-acre assemblage located off of Old Sandwich Road in southeast Plymouth, a 46 acre contiguous block near Great South Pond and South Triangle Pond, and an 88-acre expanse on Old Sandwich Road that includes Hio Hill, one of Plymouth’s highest-elevation landforms.
Bog Habitats CR | 94.9 acres: This CR encompasses three properties ranging in size from 64 acres to 11 acres, with each property including cranberry bogs now permanently retired from active production. As part of an ambitious effort to improve water quality in many of Plymouth’s 365 ponds, the Department of Marine and Environmental Affairs (DMEA) prioritized acquiring certain cranberry bog properties that were adversely affecting nearby ponds, including Savery Pond and Billington Sea.
Riparian Corridor CR | 7.4 acres: This CR includes three properties that either have frontage on or are proximate to a brook or river, including Town Brook, Carters River and Bartlett Brook. While possessed of less acreage than its Super CR brethren, the properties assembled into this CR are nonetheless of considerable significance, including the site of the former Plymco building and dam (pictured below). This property was the focus of a comprehensive restoration project initiated and led by the Department of Marine and Environmental Affairs that removed an unsightly and long-standing obstacle to fish passage and the free flow of Town Brook.
Retired Cranberry Bogs Near Savery Pond.
Town Brook Flows Freely Again!
Also completed were two individual CR’s for properties acquired after the Super CR’s were finalized and an amendment to an existing CR:
Herring Pond Watershed CR | 53.5 acres: The town purchased this property last fall with a combination of CPA funds and a LAND grant from the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. It has extensive frontage on Roxy Cahoon Road, is almost entirely upland, includes a portion of the ancient way known as Valley Road and directly abuts a 138-acre expanse that was formerly part of Camp Massasoit and is now town-owned open space.
Huntley Family Preserve CR | 4.6 acres: The town acquired this strategically situated property in July 2019. It has extensive frontage on Jenney Pond and connects with adjacent town land to create an expanded assemblage of open space along the lower Town Brook corridor and on the periphery of downtown Plymouth.
Ship Pond Road CR Amendment | 20 acres: This strategically situated property directly abuts and serves to expand the 83-acre Ship Pond Road CR the town granted to Wildlands in 2005. It is also an integral component of a large corridor of protected open space situated north of Ship Pond Road and west of Old Sandwich Road.
Every single acre protected by these restrictions is a credit to the foresight and skill of the Plymouth Community Preservation Committee (CPC). Few towns in the Commonwealth have been more successful in implementing the Act in all its dimensions, particularly in open space. Whether pursuing multi-million dollar acquisitions or more modest opportunities, the committee has done an exemplary job of building support for each open space project, securing the approval of Town Meeting, and helping to create a supportive constituency for open space preservation in Plymouth.
The committed volunteers of the CPC work closely with the skilled professionals who serve in the town’s Department of Marine and Environmental Affairs. From leading ambitious riparian restoration efforts like the Plymco project to working diligently to protect the Plymouth sole source aquifer, the DMEA never relents in its mission to secure the future of the town’s green infrastructure.
For our part, Wildlands has never come close to absorbing so much acreage into our portfolio on a single day. While counting acres is an inescapable component of land trust work — and we are always pleased to expand our holdings — we take more satisfaction from the realization that the CR’s we now hold will help permanently protect almost 1,000 acres of Plymouth’s most ecologically significant landscapes, as well as help to safeguard the considerable investment the residents of Plymouth have made in their irreplaceable open spaces. Now that’s worthy of a superlative or two!