Highlights

November 2021 - Bioreserve Promises, Bioreserve Worries

INFO ALERT - Promises made, promises broken, biodiversity diminished


Not much of a bioreserve when two of the four Bioreserve Partners, the dysfunctional Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) and the private land trust, The Trustees, ignore the reasons for the Bioreserve's existence.

The continuing destruction of the esker ridge and trail, kame and drumlin formations along Rattlesnake Brook and in other areas of the Freetown State Forest section of the Bioreserve, caused by lack of management and control of legal and illegal off-road vehicles and dirt bikes, many from out of state where such land damaging activity is not allowed, is disappointing. Unfortunately we live in a rapidly urbanizing area where multiple factors, including low levels of educational attainment and economic disadvantage, means environmental concerns are thought of as luxuries by many and receive little support. This means DCR can ignore their responsibilities because who is going to complain?

Without an environmental education and discovery center, as originally promised by The Trustees, the Bioreserve will continue to lose its biodiversity and support.

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught."
- Baba Dioum

For those that weren't there, the beginning:
A little over 20 years ago a small group of environmentally concerned locals came together to try to save the last large unprotected area of coastal forest in eastern Massachusetts from imminent destruction by rapacious development interests. A subset of that small group started the environmental advocacy organization, Green Futures.

One of the first advocacy efforts involved, getting people out there to see and walk the land, was the first BIG WALK, the Walk to Save the Forest, which attracted over 200 walkers, horseback riders and others. We walked the trails, across the forest we hoped to save, starting off west of Route 24 in Assonet and ending 18 miles later at the Acushnet Cedar Swamp State Reservation in New Bedford. Succeeding years BIG WALKS brought officials from DCR, Department of Fish and Game, two secretaries of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and one governor.

After an enthusiastic beginning and after some local political difficulties more people came onboard along with state legislators. Private environmental organizations also supported the effort. After a few years of sometimes acrimonious negotiations the forest was saved and after land surveys, species inventories and human and natural history reports the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve was born.

This from the first Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Management Plan:
"In June 2000, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of Fall River, and The Trustees of Reservation agreed to establish the state's first bioreserve, Located just east of downtown Fall River, the 13,000 acre Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve combines existing state forest and wildlife management areas, the eastern parts if the city's watershed lands, including the Copicut Reservoir, and a large parcel of land formerly owned by the Acushnet Saw Mills Company. The public and private partners agree that the success of the Bioreserve depends upon managing these lands in a cooperative and consistent manner that preserves biodiversity, conservation, water supply protection, sustainable forest management, and scientific, educational and recreational opportunities. In addition, the partners are committed to providing interpretive and educational programs that will relate the values and significance of the Bioreserve to the citizens of the Commonwealth."

 

Fall River Herald News front page article, June 22, 2000, on the creation of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. 



Where in the Bioreserve did The Trustees build their environmental education center?
Like DCR, The Trustees are ignoring the fact they signed on to create a bioreserve protecting local biodiversity. The Trustees reneged on the education center and twenty years later have come up with a destructive plan to widen almost a quarter mile of existing trail to build a trail with "play stations" for children. Why create a faux forest experience when you have miles of already existing trails and exciting natural things and nature experiences to have in the actual forest? We've taken small children wading in vernal pools, catching frogs and letting them go, watching turtles lay eggs, climbing Bell Rock, smelling flowers, playing with sticks and pine cones, jumping on puffballs to see a cloud of spores, playing Pooh Sticks, etc. Kids instinctively know what to do to have fun in the woods. It is a shame some forget that when they become "adults." 

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
- E. O. Wilson

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INFO ALERT - We don't deserve a bioreserve. 

Twenty years ago we were there to help create the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Unfortunately, It appears we will also be there to witness its demise. As the last, large, unfragmented forest in Bristol County, made up of both  public and private conservation land, its main purpose was to protect water supplies and restore and preserve native biodiversity.

Unfortunately the Bioreserve is not valued locally and the partner agencies and organizations that hold land and should be managing the Bioreserve have apparently forgotten the management plan they signed onto twenty years ago. Shame!

As we've mentioned many times over the years, the dysfunctional Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has allowed legal and illegal off-road vehicles to severely erode large areas of the forest. Since there is scant management and lack of enforcement of existing rules and regulations the motorized crowd, not all, but some, trespass on ecologically sensitive areas and have done major damage to the land.

The Bioreserve has actually lost species over the past twenty years. Rather than repeat ourselves, if interested, go here: http://www.greenfutures.org/?content=Vixqur3gqjikmmQF Click on any of the month. October 2021 lists some of the native Bioreserve species winking out or already extirpated thanks to lack of effective DCR stewardship.

We have over 3,000 letters and emails to DCR, starting when the damage to land in the state forest became really egregious. We thought they would take their stewardship of the Bioreserve seriously. They snookered us for a while until we learned that prevarication and equivocation are, obviously, required skills to be a DCR official. 

Unfortunately for the Bioreserve we have never been able to assemble enough critical mass to compel DCR to actually follow their mission statement ...and they know that. As a now retired DCR official once told us, "No one down there cares about the Freetown Forest, so why should we?"  

That brings us now to the promised environmental education center which The Trustees bailed on. When that oldest land conservation and formerly highly respected organization reneged on its promise to build an environmental education center, to interpret the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve and teach the importance of protecting our shared environment, we were disappointed. They did hire an environmental educator, Linton Harrington, who was excellent at interpreting nature and who led Bioreserve walks for  hundreds of inner city school kids and adults. Many had never been in the woods before. We, along with Linton, patiently waited for the promised educational facility. Nope, nada, nothing!

Update to 2021. So, after years of ignoring their promised education center The Trustees suddenly also ignored the purpose for the Bioreserve and acquired a "trails grant" from ...guess who? Yes, from dysfunctional MA DCR, the same agency that is supposed to be protecting and managing the Freetown State Forest section of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve as species disappear and as the land erodes away. 
 
The trails grant The Trustees received is funded from DCR's budget and ...get this ...by the federal off-road recreational vehicle fuel tax. So, the grant money coming from off-road recreationists that DCR allows to destroy their area of the Bioreserve will now be used by the Trustees to destroy almost a quarter mile of The Trustees Shockley Trail to build "play stations" for children. 

Children don't need it. Small children instinctively know how to have fun in the woods. Why create a faux forest experience when you have miles of already existing trails and exciting natural things and nature experiences to have in the actual forest? We've taken small children wading in vernal pools; catching frogs and letting them go; watching turtles lay eggs; climbing Bell Rock; making fairy houses out of ferns, bark, berries and bits of quarts and other pebbles; smelling wildflowers; playing with sticks and pine cones; jumping on puffballs to see a cloud of spores; playing Pooh Sticks; etc. It is a shame some adults forget what it was like to be a child.

You know, maybe The Trustees' trail construction would be fine in New Bedford's Buttonwood Park or some other public park in a nearby city or town, but not in a dedicated bioreserve. It is just wrong!

Here are some concerning things from their grant application. 
e) Contractor to excavate approximately 6" inches to remove duff and
loam down to mineral soil where conditions allow and rough grade. In
stonier sections trail surface may be elevated using additional fill to avoid
significant excavation.
f) Add 6"-8" of cart path aggregate material, finish grade and compact
with vibratory roller. Reuse some of loamy spoils to finish grade edges of
trail for material retention and natural look.
g) Build and install benches with contractor/staff/volunteers.
h) Build and install playscape with contractor/staff/volunteers.

4.7 Will the project occur within
Estimated Habitats of Rare Wildlife
and/or Priority Habitats of Rare Species,
according to MA Division of Fisheries
and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Atlas?
(available at
http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/PRI_E
ST_HAB/viewer.htm)

Yes

4.8 If yes, please describe what
communications you have had with the
Massachusetts Natural Heritage and
Endangered Species Program, and what
steps you are taking to avoid impacts to
rare species.

We have reached out to the National Heritage program for pre-filing
consultation and will file if required. Our in-house ecology team has looked
at the information we have available and is optimistic that this project will
be possible with minimal impact. The area is in Priority Habitats of Rare
Species, with whip-poor-wills and marbled salamanders as the primary
concerns. However, most of the real habitat for these species is on the
eastern side of Yellow Hill Rd, beyond our work area. Additionally, this
project is largely on the existing footprint of a current trail and therefore new
disturbance will be minimal. Specific concerns are any construction that
might impair salamanders crossing a trail (i.e. boardwalks or walls) and our
plan does not include any such structures, or compaction of new areas that
would reduce burrowing habitat-this will be a very minimal impact since
most of our work takes place on an existing compacted trail corridor.
 

Seems to us that the "burrowing habitat" salamanders might have something to say about this vibratory roller and aggregate.
f) Add 6"-8" of cart path aggregate material, finish grade and compact
with vibratory roller.

You know, the $50,000 received for the grant should be enough to commission some great plans for The Trustees' Bioreserve Environmental Education Center. Charles Eliot would approve.
 
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools."
- John Muir

 

Marbled salamander fleeing from The Trustees' vibratory roller.

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