Welcome (Back), Seasonal Land Stewards!

Every summer, caring for our trails becomes a mightier task, as vegetation and visitation peak. Our Seasonal Land Stewards help Wildlands meet these increased demands on our lands, all while gaining invaluable skills for a conservation career.

According to the position description, Seasonal Land Stewards “perform tasks related to the day-to-day management and maintenance of conservation lands throughout 55 cities and towns in Southeastern Massachusetts.” Tasks include brush-clearing and mowing of trails, upkeep of fencing, boardwalks, and signage, and parking lot clean-up.

This year, our seasonal staff comprises new and familiar faces. Read on to learn more about these exciting additions to the Wildlands family. And be sure to say hello when you encounter them out on the trails!

Marina Smiarowski 

We are grateful to welcome back Marina for her second summer as a Seasonal Land Steward. Since she last worked on our trails, Marina completed her first year at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where she plans on majoring in chemistry. Growing up, Marina was involved with her local land trust in Branford, Connecticut, sparking her desire to pursue a career in conservation. Before Wildlands, Marina interned with the Stewart B. McKinney US Fish & Wildlife Service unit in Connecticut. 

Pat Collett 

Pat is a new face around the Wildlands office, but he is no stranger to our trails. Having grown up in Hanson, just down the road from the Indian Head River, Pat has been exploring natural areas across the South Shore for as long as he can remember. These experiences have shaped his passion for protecting the local environment. This fall, Pat will enter his junior year at the University of Maine, where he is studying environmental science. As a Seasonal Land Steward, Pat enjoys being outside every day, working with his hands to make environmental improvements that he can see and take pride in. In his free time, Pat enjoys fishing. 

Upgrades at Willow Brook Farm: Support Our Work

Support us today so that Willow Brook Farm can continue to support us tomorrow.

For all that nature gives us—clean air and water, improved mental and physical health, diverse wildlife habitat, protection from heat waves and floods—it asks for little in return. When it does need our help, can it count on the Wildlands community? 

Few places anywhere pack the same wealth of cultural and natural resources into a suburban setting as Willow Brook Farm, a Wildlands Trust showcase preserve in Pembroke. Comprising 167 wild acres just 30 miles south of Boston, Willow Brook Farm epitomizes the globally rare ecological diversity of the Herring Brook Valley. Each year, over 20,000 people explore Willow Brook’s field, forest, and wetland habitats to learn about the human and natural communities that have come and gone from the region. 

“Willow Brook Farm is a special place,” said Wildlands President Karen Grey. “Whether you come here to walk your dog, go for a run, listen to the birds, or simply escape the stresses of daily life, Willow Brook has something for everyone.” 

After 27 years serving the people and wildlife of Southeastern Massachusetts, Willow Brook Farm needs upgrades to bolster its safety and value for future generations. Tasks include replacing Willow Brook’s 400 yards of boardwalk, building three covered picnic tables, expanding wayfinding amenities, restoring historic meadow habitat, and improving the parking lot. 

Unfortunately, improving public amenities in frequently flooded environments isn’t cheap: we estimate the restoration to cost $60,000. 

“For many years, Wildlands staff and volunteers have made repairs at Willow Brook in a piecemeal way,” said Stewardship Operations Manager Owen Grey. “We’re now at the point where proactively addressing the underlying issue—natural decay of aging infrastructure—will save us significant time and resources in the long run. It also gives us an opportunity to improve and expand Willow Brook’s built infrastructure to match its natural beauty.” 

Old cart path at Willow Brook Farm.

Historic field and boulders at Willow Brook Farm.

Historic path at Willow Brook Farm.

Boardwalk at Willow Brook Farm.

Grassy path at Willow Brook Farm.

Hardwood forest at Willow Brook Farm.

If you love Willow Brook Farm, we need your help! Wildlands Trust is seeking $20,000 in public donations to support this effort. An anonymous funder has agreed to a 2:1 match on every donation under $500 and a 1:1 match on all others, up to $40,000. That means you can triple your impact: a $50 donation will give us $150 to secure the future of this beloved preserve. 

“This campaign is an opportunity for the local and regional community to come together over a shared interest in nature,” President Karen Grey concluded. “When places like Willow Brook thrive, we all thrive. I hope you will consider supporting this work.” 

To donate, visit wildlandstrust.org/upgradewillowbrook. We also accept checks, stocks, and donor-advised funds. 

Multiply your impact by sharing this campaign with your friends, family, and neighbors! Sign up for our E-News and follow us on Facebook and Instagram for updates and opportunities to get involved as our work at Willow Brook Farm continues. 

Welcome Pollinators to Your Garden This Spring

A bee rests on a dahlia in the Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm.

By Marilynn Atterbury, Key Volunteer

With the first day of spring right around the corner, green thumbs across Southeastern Massachusetts are twiddling with excitement. Gardeners are already dreaming of the flowers and produce that will revitalize their eyes, noses, and tongues after a long, dark winter.

But in early spring, protect the pollinators that sustain your garden and local ecosystem by leaving busyness to the bees. Believe it or not, the best thing you can do for your pollinator garden right now is nothing at all!

Many pollinators, especially bees and butterflies, spend the winter nestled in garden debris. If you rake up those pesky leaves too soon, you will literally be throwing away this year’s pollinators. Wait until the weather warms to a consistent 50 degrees—usually in late March or early April—for your garden clean-up.

Another early-spring tip: bees wake up hungry! So, make sure to plant early-blooming flowers, such as bleeding heart, lungwort, or ajuga. Even a little sugar water will help.

And don’t forget a water source: a shallow dish with flat rocks (for butterfly perching habitat) will do nicely.

Follow these simple tips this spring, and soon your gardens will be alive with pollinators!

Marilynn (center) helps two high school students restore the Community Garden during Summer of Service.

Marilynn is a primary gardener at Davis-Douglas Farm, and the founder of our pollinator garden. She is also a Wildlands board member, Adopt-a-Preserve lead volunteer, event decorator, and more! Say hello the next time you visit our Plymouth headquarters.

Human History of Wildlands: Shifting Lots Preserve

Ellisville men set out with their boats for a day of sea mossing, circa 1969. Sea mossing was a rite of passage for many Ellisville teenagers. Photo courtesy of Roger Janson, via Friends of Ellisville Marsh.

By Skip Stuck, Wildlands Key Volunteer

You probably would not be reading this if you were not already familiar with Wildlands Trust, its mission, the properties it protects, and the value of wild places in Southeastern Massachusetts. 

Interestingly, where we live, "wild" does not mean untouched by human hands. Just as important as our region’s natural history—our wildlife, forests, seashores, rivers, and ponds—is its human history, crafted by the many hands that have touched and shaped this special place. In fact, there are few if any places in America that offer a richer human history than right here in Southeastern Massachusetts. 

Today, each of Wildlands’ wild places has had many other lives—as hunting grounds, farms, villages, and homes, stewarded, inhabited, and explored by diverse groups ranging from Native Americans to settlers from around the world. With a well-trained eye, much can be learned about these preserves’ natural and human history from their present-day landscapes—the plant and animal life, the geology, the relics of historic land use. But missing from this picture are many of the human stories that give these lands color and context. To this end, we at Wildlands hope to increase our understanding of the human history of the landscapes we protect. 

Following, you will find a brief history of one important property, Shifting Lots Preserve in the Ellisville village of Plymouth. This account is far from exhaustive; it is a living document that we will update as we receive more information from the community. This is the first of hopefully many entries in a series about the human history of Wildlands preserves. 

Al Marsh (lower right) and his father Percy Marsh (center) working with the lobster cars in Ellisville Marsh in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Marsh family, via Friends of Ellisville Marsh. Read more about Al’s story in his 2020 account, “Ellisville History,” linked in the “Learn More” section below.

We need your help! We will soon be reaching out to volunteer trail monitors, property abutters, local historians, and others to paint a more complete picture of our cherished lands’ storied pasts. If you have stories to share about a Wildlands preserve, please contact Communications Coordinator Thomas Patti at tpatti@wildlandstrust.org. 

Stay tuned...

---

A Brief History of Ellisville harbor and Shifting Lots 

Ellisville Harbor has been coveted for many uses by many parties (human and otherwise) dating back to pre-colonial times. As a result, conflict is a recurring theme of the area’s history, with environmental degradation frequently among the collateral damage. Protection efforts by state, nonprofit, and volunteer groups over the past three decades have begun to restore the area to its original scenic and ecological beauty. 

1600s 

• For hundreds of years, the area was seasonally used by members of the Wampanoag tribe for shellfishing, farming, and hunting waterfowl. In the 1620s, Europeans arrived and settled the harbor area. 

• Ellisville Harbor was named after Lt. John Ellis, Commander of the Sandwich Militia, who was killed in King Philip's War. Also known as Harlow's Landing, Ellisville was the family's homestead for over 250 years. 

• Farmers and fishermen settled the natural harbor to grow salt hay, tend sheep and cattle, and harvest codfish, lobsters, and herring from the sea. 

• A natural spring that fed into the bay is still in use today. 

1700s and 1800s 

• Saltmarsh Lane was a main road north to Boston. A 1711 inn, now a private home, welcomed wayfarers including Henry David Thoreau. 

• Farming and fishing continued as the area became more settled. 

• For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, local fishing families also harvested Irish moss, a seaweed with uses in the production of toothpaste, yogurt, chocolate, and more. It was trucked from Ellisville to Scituate, the American hub of the Irish moss industry, to be processed.   

• With more use, Elllisville Harbor saw more silting in, and despite being protected by a barrier beach, periodic dredging began. 

Lobster boats moored along the Ellisville channel. Photo courtesy of Don Maricle, via Friends of Ellisville Marsh.

1900s 

• By 1900, several significant changes occurred. Plymouth and Cape Cod were becoming vacation destinations. While traditional uses continued until the mid-1900s, with the last lobstering and moss boats moving out in the early 1980s, summer visitors were increasingly attracted to the undeveloped barrier beaches. Overuse by off-road vehicles resulted in increased beach damage and littering, troubling the year-round residents. 

• In addition, the digging of the nearby Cape Cod Canal in the early 1900s changed the tidal patterns and expanded the barrier beach, often closing off the harbor outlet and increasing silting, thus requiring a breakwater. The harbor mouth moved 0.5 miles south. 

• The Ellisville Harbor area was designated an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) by the Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs in 1980.   

• In 1991, an event that came to be known as the “Perfect Storm” closed the harbor outlet altogether, requiring the resumption of dredging. (This happened again in 2005.) 

• Also in 1991, the state purchased the Harlow property and created Ellisville Harbor State Park on the north side of the harbor. 

2000s      

• The south side of the marsh and harbor remained unprotected from development until 2003, when it was donated to Wildlands Trust and named the Shifting Lots Preserve. 

• Recognizing the importance of Ellisville harbor for nesting and the rearing of endangered birds and wildlife, regulations for preserve access and use were soon implemented. 

• In 2009, a History Channel documentary segment portraying the 1620 landing of the Pilgrims used Shifting Lots as one of its filming locations. 

Learn More: 

To learn more about the history, ecology, and importance of Shifting Lots and Ellisville Harbor, take time to visit and experience it for yourself. Also, see these resources: 

• Visit wildlandstrust.org/events to find a schedule of group hikes and volunteer opportunities at Shifting Lots and other Wildlands Trust preserves 

• Our property description at wildlandstrust.org/shifting-lots-preserve 

• The Friends of Ellisville Marsh at ellisvillemarsh.org 

• Rescuing Ellisville Marsh: The Long Fight to Restore Lost Connections by Eric P. Cody, founder of the Friends of Ellisville Marsh

• “Ellisville History” by Albert Marsh, 2020. Shared with permission from the Estate of Albert B. Marsh.

Wildlands Pilots Volunteer Training Series

Programs at the Stewardship Training Center will prepare entry-level volunteers to contribute to local conservation.

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Volunteers donate their time, energy, knowledge, and skills to conservation initiatives across the state. Investing in their generosity is one of the most efficient and effective ways to invest in our natural and scenic lands. Who will lend these helping hands a helping hand? 

Wildlands Trust’s Stewardship Training Center aims to do just that—equip volunteers with the confidence and know-how they need to care for the conservation lands they cherish, and then connect them with opportunities to put those skills to work. 

Last July, Wildlands convened a focus group of 12 municipal conservation professionals to assess training needs for local volunteers. The consensus was clear: volunteers bring a wide range of skill sets to land stewardship projects. Developing a standardized training program would not only build cities and towns’ stewardship capacity, but also help them evaluate that capacity and plan projects accordingly.  

“Over a quarter of Massachusetts is protected conservation land, and we need to grow our capacity to care for it,” said Wildlands President Karen Grey. “A corps of committed volunteers can play a significant role, which is why we’re offering programming at the Stewardship Training Center to create a critical mass of trained volunteers to help municipalities and land trusts steward their properties.” 

Enter Wildlands’ Tier 1 Volunteer Training Series, a pilot program this winter and spring at the Stewardship Training Center. After completing four two-hour modules, volunteers will return to the trails with proficiency in core stewardship areas: 

• Feb. 24: Basic First Aid & CPR 

• Mar. 7: Public Advocacy & Challenges 

• Apr. 18: Hand Tool Use & Maintenance 

• May 9: Trail Monitoring & Maintenance 

Except for Basic First Aid & CPR, these programs are free to all current and prospective volunteers. No experience is required. Volunteers are strongly encouraged to attend all four modules and receive Tier 1 certification, detailing the skills they learned from experienced Wildlands staff and partners. Wildlands will offer these modules again in the future. 

"There is a significant community of enthusiastic volunteers just waiting for us to bring them in on advancing local and regional land conservation,” said Wildlands volunteer Rob MacDonald, who played a key role in the conception of these programs. “The Tier 1 Training Series will help connect this base to towns, cities, and nonprofits that need their help.” 

All current and interested land stewardship volunteers are welcome. In addition to skill-building, these sessions will offer an avenue for physical activity, scaled to individual ability. They will also introduce trainees to a tight-knit community of like-minded peers and to new ways to get involved with local conservation efforts. 

To learn more about the Tier 1 Volunteer Training Series and other opportunities at the Stewardship Training Center, visit wildlandstrust.org/training or contact Stewardship Programs Manager Zoë Smiarowski at trainingcenter@wildlandstrust.org.