Pond Shore Restoration Begins in Plymouth

Wildlands Trust is collaborating with the Town of Plymouth to undertake the restoration of the western shoreline of Halfway Pond, the centerpiece of our 430-acre Halfway Pond Conservation Area. Over the years, a variety of activities including vehicle traffic, snow plowing, and human disturbance and trampling have contributed to the destruction of the vegetative buffer, which is critically important for maintaining water quality and wildlife.

“Damage to the pond shore from vehicles has grown considerably in recent years. Plymouth is growing and more and more GPS apps are sending cars through the area to avoid high traffic spots,” said Wildlands Trust Director Karen Grey. “Last fall an 18-wheel truck loaded with cranberries jack-knifed into the pond because the driver was following GPS directions.”

Cranberries washing ashore after a tractor trailer full of berries jack-knifed into Halfway Pond

The plan is to remove old fencing and debris, establish appropriate erosion controls, and re-plant and enlarge the pond shore buffer. Our goal is to improve habitat features and pond health, and to establish appropriate public access. As part of this project, the Plymouth Selectmen have given approval for Wildlands Trust to convert a quarter mile stretch of Mast Road owned by Wildlands into a footpath.

Restoration at Jarabeck Preserve, Swansea

Wildlands Trust stewardship staff and volunteers are working to revive the 42-acre Jarabeck Preserve.  An original holding of the Swansea Land Trust, Jarabeck is one of six conservation parcels transferred to Wildlands nearly ten years ago. It is our western-most preserve with an accessible trail system. The forested property has several lovely small ponds and marsh areas.

“We want to make Jarabeck accessible to the residents of Swansea for activities like hiking, bird-watching, snow shoeing, and nature photography,” said Wildlands Stewardship Manager Erik Boyer. “It’s a great spot but it needs some serious attention right now.”

Boyer and his crew have already removed three truckloads of dumped debris from the property and as the weather warms, they will be cutting back the over-grown trails and clearing trees that have come down in storms. By the late spring, their work should be complete and the property will be open for hiking!

2017: A Year for Conservation

As we ring in the new year, we would like to thank you for the conservation successes you’ve made possible in 2017.

Overlooking Great South Pond atop Pinnacle Hill at Luigi and Teotista Cortelli Preserve
Photo by Jerry Monkman

This past year, Wildlands Trust was able to add 450 acres to our protected lands portfolio, land that we will conserve and protect in perpetuity. At the very beginning of 2017, we announced the largest single acquisition in Wildlands’ 44-year history thanks to the generosity and enduring conservation ethic of donors Gerald and Maureen Sheehan. The 275-acre Luigi and Teotista Cortelli Preserve on Great South Pond in Plymouth contains globally rare habitats and is a critical link in a 19,000-acre corridor of contiguous open space in Southeastern Massachusetts. Throughout 2017, our land stewardship staff and various volunteer crews constructed a trail system at this preserve that links the Plymouth Town Forest with Myles Standish State Forest. We led a number of public hikes last year highlighting this corridor, including the two-part, 20-mile Big Ramble in June and a 6-mile hike around Great South Pond in September.

In Bridgewater, Wildlands Trust collaborated with the Mass. Deparment of Fish and Game to save an additional 62 acres along the Taunton River, expanding our Great River Preserve and the larger Taunton River Wildlife Management Area, which now encompasses a total of 570 acres. With a generous memorial gift in honor of Mark Kaetzer, our stewardship staff and volunteers began working on improvements at the entrance of Great River Preserve. We completed the new memorial gate and bench at the end of 2017, and in 2018, we will build a new handicapped parking area and a barrier free trail to provide access to the Taunton River for all people.

Stewardship volunteers and staff worked together to complete the new memorial gate at the entrance of Great River Preserve on Auburn St. in Bridgewater. Photo by Rob MacDonald.

In addition to these standout stewardship projects, our staff and volunteers completed countless improvements to Wildlands Trust trail systems across our region. In Wareham, we reestablished the trail system at Great Neck Preserve and in a collaborative effort to install a network of trails in the Mark’s Cove area, we added two miles of trails and water crossings at our Gleason Family Preserve. The trail systems of Six Ponds Preserve and Emery West Preserve, part of the Davis-Douglas Farm Conservation Area, were extended and improved for public access over a number of volunteer workdays. A new trail map for Davis-Douglas Farm is in the works.

Our new Community Stewardship Program continued to assist municipalities in our service area with trail design, construction, and mapping, grant attainment, networking, and outreach. In Brockton, we are working on the restoration of 2.4 miles of trails in the city’s 104-acre Stone Farm Conservation Area began. Once complete, this trail system will connect to Wildlands Trust’s Brockton Audubon Preserve, providing miles of hiking trails within the city. Our CSP staff are also spearheading outreach efforts for the Greening the Gateway Cities Program in Brockton, which seeks to plant 2,400 trees in the city at no cost to landowners in an effort to increase shade and reduce household energy costs by 5 to 10 percent.

The Community Conservation Barn was open for its first full year at our new headquarters at Davis-Douglas Farm in Plymouth. We offered over 70 public programs in the Barn and 126 public programs overall, attracting 1,500 people to participate in the Wildlands Trust mission through hikes, wellness workshops, presentations, trainings, meetings, and more. The new Barn and beautiful 10-acre grounds at Davis-Douglas Farm also allowed us to host our first ever OkTRAILberfest celebration in October. OkTRAILberfest attracted over 200 people and raised $11,000 for our Youth Unplugged Initiative, providing outdoor opportunities for youth of all ages.

The 2017 Green Team middle school age group volunteers at Bay Farm in Bourne

Youth Unplugged saw a boost in 2017 with the growth of both the Envirothon and Green Team programs. In addition to sponsoring and coaching the Brockton High School Envirothon team for our third consecutive year, we assisted in starting a new Envirothon team at Plymouth South High School. The summer Green Team grew from a small-group high school internship to include both middle and high school age groups in 2017, expanding our capacity to engage local youth in meaningful environmental learning and volunteerism.

Fundraising was strong in 2017 thanks to the generosity of our 1,400 members. Most notable was your commitment to land protection and the funding needed to make it happen. This fiscal year, our members contributed nearly $600,000 to help purchase and steward land, the foundation of our mission.

As we reflect on these successes, we are also aware that there are many challenges to conserving land in the age of intensive development pressures, shifting community needs and fiscal priorities, and unprecedented reliance on our technological devices. Our mission to conserve and permanently protect the native habitats, farmlands, and ecologically valuable and scenic landscapes of Southeastern Massachusetts feels more important than ever. 2017 was a strong year for local land conservation, but there is important work ahead in 2018 and beyond.

At Wildlands Trust, we envision a future where open land is abundant, our water is clean, and forests, farms, wetlands, fields, ponds, and coastal areas are commonplace sightings on our landscape. Thank you for sharing this vision and supporting our efforts. Together, we unlock the potential to protect even more land for the public benefit year after year. If you are not a member, please consider joining today to help us kick off 2018!

Holiday Charity Drive Report

Throughout the holiday season, you brought us food items, gift cards, and handmade hats for those in need in the Wildlands Trust service area. With your help, we were able to collect 200+ food items for the South Shore Community Action Council's Food Resource Program, which distributes to 45 pantries, soup kitchens, schools, and more throughout the South Shore, and $200+ dollars in gift cards and dozens of homemade hats to the Turning Point Shelter in Wareham, a community in which Wildlands Trust holds seven properties. 

Thank you so much to all who brought in items to donate! It truly made a difference for those in need. Please remember you can donate all year long to either of these amazing organizations. 

Towns Receive CPA Matching Funds for Open Space Projects

Multiple towns across Wildlands Trust’s coverage area, including many we actively partner with on Community Preservation Act (CPA) open space projects, recently received notification of the distributions they would receive this fiscal year from the CPA Trust Fund.  Established as part of the CPA’s enabling legislation in 2000, the Trust Fund provides for annual distributions to communities that have passed the CPA, and is funded by a surcharge levied on transactions at Registries of Deeds across the Commonwealth.  Although the percentage of matching funds varies from year to year, the matching funds are critical to complementing the funds each CPA community raises locally. 

Within the region Wildlands serves, our hometown Plymouth led the way, receiving $389,552 in matching funds. 

Plymouth's Center Hill Preserve in the winter. Photo by Jerry Monkman.

The CPA has been the most significant catalyst for locally-driven open space protection in the Commonwealth’s history, and has enabled communities to pursue a wide range of projects that would otherwise have not materialized.  A classic example of such projects we often cite is the Center Hill Preserve project in Plymouth.  Back in 2005-06, the Town acquired 78 acres, including 28 acres on Cape Cod Bay, at an initial cost of $5.7 million—but subsequently leveraged over $3 million in federal and state funds.  And there’s more--with the 1:1 Trust Fund match then prevailing, the Town’s net cost of the Center Hill Project was under $2 Million. Leveraging of this scale isn’t always feasible, but similar if less expensive examples abound of communities successfully using CPA funds to help leverage outside funds. 

One could argue that a working definition of a livable community is one that invests in all of its critical infrastructure, and not just “traditional” infrastructure (roads and bridges, utilities).  While traditional infrastructure is undeniably important and worthy of investment, the CPA focuses in part on our ecological and historical infrastructure—both often underfunded and even neglected before the advent of the Act.  

Congratulations to Plymouth and all the CPA communities in our region for adopting the Act, and working diligently to successfully implement its multiple community preservation dimensions.