Highlights
July 2021 - Bioreserve Loon Walk, News Articles, Solar
ACTIVITY ALERT - JULY"S WALK EXPLORING THE SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS BIORESERVE (SMB).
Meeting time, date and location: 8 a.m., July 10, Saturday, at The Trustees' parking lot at the intersection of Indian Town Road and Yellow Hill Road, Fall River, MA.
Photo courtesy USFWS
Here is an article from the Herald News about loons and last year's loon family:
by Audrey Cooney
Herald News Staff Reporter
One year after a common loon chick in Fall River became the first to be born in southeastern Massachusetts in more than 100 years, conservationists are continuing the slow but steady process of reintroducing a native species to its original habitat.
“People do not, right now, even know what a common loon is,” said Ericka Griggs, a researcher at the Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland, Maine.
The common loon is listed as a “species of concern” by the state. Griggs estimates there are only about 50 living in Massachusetts, although they used to be plentiful in the area. Beginning in 2015, BRI has introduced several dozen loons from Maine and New York to a pond in Lakeville.
Last year, a mated pair from those nested in Fall River and produced a chick, the first in the area for more than a century.
Griggs said it’s too early to tell if more loons will hatch in southeastern Massachusetts this year, as chicks usually don’t emerge from their eggs until May or June. BRI plans to relocate more of the birds to the area this year, and to expand to western Mass. in 2022.
Griggs said loons are an important way to evaluate the overall health of an ecosystem. Because they’re at the upper levels of their food chain, eating fish that eat invertebrates, scientists can test them for toxic metals to see if toxins are present in the ecosystem in levels dangerous to humans.
Plus, there’s an aesthetic benefit to bringing wildlife back.
“It’s very exciting and peaceful to see them on the lake and hear them,” said Griggs.
“The thing about restoring the species is there has to be coexistence and a sharing on the lakes. And sharing the lake with loons means people are going to have to change some of their practices,” she said.
Boaters and fishers will need to get used to loons’ behavior as the species returns to local waterways. For example, humans going too close to their nests can cause the birds to crush their own eggs in their rush to escape. And unlike ducks, loons are more likely to dive after fishing lines and swallow lures, which can be dangerous for them.
“People are used to, if you drive a boat near a duck, it will fly away. But a loon won’t because it’s protecting its chick,” Griggs said.
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INFO ALERT - July's Exploring the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Walk and next month's exploratory walk
This past Saturday we hiked through the lush and verdant forest from The Trustees Copicut Woods section of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve south and the east to the west shore of the Copicut Reservoir in search of a loon or two. No loon was seen although one could have been on a small island, hunkered down and out of sight, on its nest up in the northwest corner of the reservoir.
Beyond the Satanic Panic
The real story of Fall River’s Bioreserve
Dan Medeiros The Herald News | USA TODAY NETWORK
There are ghosts in Fall River’s woods, but they’re not invisible.
They’re in the stone walls snaking through the dense woods of the Watuppa Reservation, centuries-old outlines that divided what was once cleared farmland. Ghosts linger in the Native American names you’ll find all over the Bioreserve: Copicut, Quanipaug, Watuppa, Massasoit. They’re in the old Yankee names that followed them: Dr. Nathan Durfee’s Mill Pond, Clint Davis Trail, Miller Lane. The spirits of the past are inside the timeworn stones that carry hikers across streams, the paths someone cut through the wilderness untold decades ago, the foundations of houses now consumed by thick moss and forest. h The ghosts are Fall River’s history, and in the city’s vast eastern woodland, you can touch them, see them. They live still.
Fall River Water Department intern Luis Estrella, left, and city forester Mike Labossiere are part of the crew that stewards the city’s 5,000-acre share of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. PHOTOS BY DAN MEDEIROS/HERALD NEWS
‘The devil worship place’
I’m meeting city forester Mike Labossiere for a hike through the woods off Quanipaug Road, an unpaved dirt lane deep in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve that runs along the north shore of the Copicut Reservoir. Unless you have a four-wheel drive or a mountain bike, you should drive through Dartmouth to get there. Just as I’m slinging my backpack over a shoulder, my sister calls me, and I tell her I have to go — I’m meeting a guy in the forest.
“The forest?” she says. “You mean ‘the forest’ forest? The devil worship place?” “Mm-hmm,” I say.
“Be careful.”
Satan worshippers aren’t often found performing their fiendish blood rites at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, but her reaction is common around here. We’ve watched the recent Epix channel documentary series “Fall River” about the so-called “Satanic cult murders” from 1979 and 1980, where the remains of two young women were found in Fall River’s woods. Both were much more likely the victims of abusive, drug-addicted criminal psychopaths than sacrificial lambs to appease Lucifer — but spooky legends about killings, corpses, curses and pukwudgies have dogged Fall River’s woods ever since. It’s kept too many people from hiking in Fall River’s eastern half, a huge expanse of square mileage packed with history and natural beauty.
Everett Castro, director of community affairs for the local environmental group Green Futures, has been fighting these superstitions for years. He describes a talk he once gave to the Tuesday Club of Freetown when advocating for the creation of the Bioreserve.
“The women all had stories. They had stories of being girls in Freetown and going to dance around the maypole on May Day in the state forest. Going out to the forest to pick wild cherries and blueberries,”
Castro says. “And then they all looked horrid and said they would never go there today — because, of course, this was basically because of Carl Drew and that whole murder thing. And they were petrified to go in the forest. And that’s continued.”
The Epix series explored how Satanic Panic of the late 1970s and early ‘80s infected Fall River, fueled by fear of crime and drugs, and pushed into the mainstream culture by people who were misinformed, easily persuaded, self-promoters — sometimes a mix of all of the above. Believers in the paranormal have labeled Fall River’s forest as part of the “Bridgewater Triangle,” a place haunted by every kind of superstition from Bigfoot to pterodactyls to UFOs. All that, and its physical remoteness combined with the fact that many roads here are unpaved, have kept the Bioreserve from being fully appreciated to the degree of other state parks.
I ask Castro if he’s ever seen a pterodactyl in the state forest. It’s my job to ask.
“No, no pterodactyls,” he says.
“It hurts me personally, because I’m so involved in this, when I see people afraid to go out there, thinking there’s devil worshippers and Satanic baloney,” Castro says. “This area is rife with that, and it’s basically because we are an environmentally ignorant area. It’s a shame.”
‘We are poised to do something really special’
There is a pukwudgie in the forest, but it’s not a supernatural imp. It’s me: a short, hairy, Portuguese creature covered in bug spray and sunscreen, bumbling along behind Labossiere as he moves swiftly along a lightly marked path through the Bioreserve.
The Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve is 16,000 acres of forest and water— larger than some national parks — a patchwork of different properties owned and managed by several entities. The state Department of Conservation and Recreation manages much of the land. A piece is owned by the Trustees of Reservations, a nonprofit environmental group. MassWildlife manages some land, and Buzzards Bay Coalition has a tiny piece. The City of Fall River owns about 5,000 acres, some available for recreation and some used to protect our two water supplies: the North Watuppa Pond and the Copicut Reservoir.
Labossiere works for the city Water Department, though he spends much of his time among the trees. I’d need a map, but he knows these paths like people know Route 6. After a short hike, he leads me to a narrow stream where gallons of clear fresh water flow past.
“It’s all about keeping the forest healthy. ... It’s purifying the water,” he says. “And this is heading down to the Copicut Reservoir. And this is clean. This doesn’t cost anything. Nature did that for us. The cleaner we deliver the water to the reservoir, the less costly it is to treat the water at the other end.”
We’re 6 miles as the crow flies from downtown Fall River. The only sounds are birdsong, the murmur of water rushing past our feet, the wind sighing through leaves. Although long stereotyped as a city of tenements and potholes, easily half of the city of Fall River is actually this — serene forest with over 50 miles of trails, free and available for anyone to enjoy.
That’s the other part of Labossiere’s job — managing those trails, and enticing more people to visit by making them easier to reach.
He and his crew have spent time managing an assortment of trails. Some are easy mile-long walks perfect for beginner hikers or people looking to become familiar with the area. Others are more challenging, like a 20-mile trail that’s a smorgasbord of different areas.
“The wealth that we have in this natural treasure is so beyond what we can deal with,” Labossiere says.
The Bioreserve is a landscape as varied and gorgeous as Blue Hills Reservation in Milton or Myles Standish State Forest in Carver — and larger than either of them. He sees no reason why the Bioreserve can’t be as popular and beloved an outdoors destination as those places. Groups like the Trustees of Reservations and Green Futures have led walking tours of trails for years. The Appalachian Mountain Club has started leading regular easy hikes here, with people coming from the Boston area to tread the Bioreserve’s paths — a path that leads to greater success in the city’s hospitality industry, Labossiere says.
But he’d be happiest seeing local people out here.
“We really want to see our residents get the maximum enjoyment out of this. There’s a practical reason. The more ownership they feel and the more utility they get out of it, you’re going to naturally want to take care of it,” Labossiere says. “Even if you’re not actively taking care of it, if you’re not contributing to the bad stuff, I’ll take that on any given day.”
He stops walking and becomes visibly frustrated when Fall River’s forest legends and superstitions are mentioned. He’s been working in and enjoying these woods since 1985, and he finds local belief in the Bridgewater Triangle and the Satanic cult stories not only absurd but harmful.
“We have the Quequechan rail trail, we have other things with the Taunton River, we have beautiful Olmsted parks. It’s a brilliant story,” he says. “We are poised to do something really special. We have got to stop talking about these occult murders and this crap.”
‘We have people here with vivid imaginations’
There are legends in Fall River’s woods, but they’re not supernatural.
Labossiere leads me to a spot near the Boiling Spring Trail off Quanipaug Road, where firs reach far into the sky and provide cooling shade. We’ve descended into a small depression a few feet lower than the surrounding land. I look around at shelves of rock around us and realize we’re standing in what was once the foundation of somebody’s house.
“There was a guy named Ben Jones who lived out here, out by himself,” Labossiere says. “He used to go out to the swamp and cut a cedar tree ... a 30-footlong tree, and he would drag it out of the woods, and he would strap it to his Elgin bicycle, and he would haul it into the city. They were used for clothesline poles behind the three-deckers.”
Where some people see wilderness, Labossiere sees signs of life and bits of Fall River history. He tells me about a trout hatchery that once existed at the reservoir, a sawmill that stood at Copicut and Indian Town roads and another at the other end of Quanipaug. He indicates the stone walls and asks me to imagine their original purpose, as property markers for farms and wood lots owned by the Braytons, Bordens and Brightmans.
“There’s all these evidences of multiple generations and activities that precede us by many hundreds of years,” he says. “We’re not even talking Native American, which would be millennia.”
Northwest of us and closer to Freetown, by a small pond, there is the site of a mill owned by Dr. Nathan Durfee, which Everett Castro tells me was used to grind chestnut hulls into patent medicine. A bit north of that is the Freetown Ledge, a popular hiking spot, where in the 19th century the Fall River Granite Co. extracted great quantities of pinkish bedrock highly prized for its durability and used to build statehouses, mansions, cathedrals, forts. The quarry has since flooded, making a lovely, picturesque pond.
These remnants of history sometimes curdle into superstitions. Castro recalls a talk given at the Freetown Historical Society, where a paranormal group claimed the Ledge was haunted by the ghost of a Native American maiden. Distraught at not being able to marry the son of a rival tribe’s chief — “this is Romeo and Juliet, right?” Castro says — she climbed to the top of the ledge and flung herself into the pond below to drown. An old-timer spoke up at the talk and noted that, during the time of Native American chiefs and princesses, the ledge and the pond didn’t exist yet.
“We have people here, locals, with vivid imaginations and very superstitious,” Castro says.
‘This would have been another Quequechan story’
There are monsters in Fall River’s forest, and they’re human.
Labossiere fields a few phone calls for work while we’re out hiking together — not easy, since the cell service here is spotty to nonexistent. “A dead dog wrapped in a tarp,” he says.
I wander off while he tells his crew how to handle the situation. I haven’t seen much trash out here, but at one point we walked past the remains of a refrigerator — someone has decided it’d be easier to haul it outside, put it in a truck, drive it on a dirt road, drag it over rocks and trees in the forest, and leave it here, rather than pay $13 for curbside pickup.
“In all of my time clearing downed trees, cutting brush, maintaining trail wayfinding, and engaging in other maintenance tasks, I have never had an experience at Copicut that I would consider mysterious or supernatural,” says Winslow Dresser, associate field director at the Trustees of Reservations. “To be honest, the only times I’ve ever been troubled in these woods are when I find litter and/or damage caused by people or by natural processes like storms and weather events.”
The people I speak to have never seen any true evidence of Satanic rituals or anything supernatural. What they have seen is primarily vandalism or illegal dumping misinterpreted by witnesses, embellished by tale- tellers, passed along as gossip, becoming warnings that scare off visitors.
Castro recalls a pet cemetery that briefly existed in the state forest in the 1970s and ‘80s. “Nitwits from the area went up there, meaning kids smoking dope, dug up the pets and left them around — that’s another thing that started this Satanic stuff.” Other animal mutilations found in the forest during that time, he attributes to recent immigrants to Fall River butchering livestock and leaving parts of the carcasses in the woods, later found and assumed to be Satanists’ handiwork.
I recently received photos from a hiker terrified that he’d stumbled into a site where Satanic sacrifices took place — the photos showed benches in a circle, with trees and stone walls scrawled with graffiti. I told him he’d actually found the Wampanoag Native American reservation property, which had been defiled by racist vandals a few years ago.
Luis Estrella, a recent B.M.C. Durfee High graduate and the Water Department’s first-ever intern, is spending this summer with Labossiere and his crew, clearing dumping sites, maintaining existing trails, and helping establish new ones. “I have so many friends, when I say that I work at the Reservation, [they say] ‘Oh, you hear about the cult murders?’” Estrella says. “I’m like, ‘Is that all you know?’” These horror stories have had a way of cutting people off from their own land. But at least the land has now been preserved for us to find it again. The Bioreserve’s creation nearly 20 years ago was itself a tradeoff to allow business development on a small portion of state land, where the Amazon distribution center is today. By allowing that plot to be developed, the state preserved 19 times as much land in perpetuity.
Labossiere has heard of other plans that could have turned Quanipaug Road into a highway, seen blueprints that would have leveled the forest and replaced it with cul-de-sacs and golf courses. Castro heard once that a legislator wanted a horse-racing track there. As we stand on the site of an old sawmill on the Copicut Reservoir, Labossiere tells a real-life horror story that nearly ruined the Bioreserve for good — in the 1970s, a coal gasification plant could have been built on land that we just hiked through, right next to Copicut Reservoir, a drinking water source.
“The water,” he says, gesturing to a stream that feeds clean water into the reservoir, “this would have been another Quequechan story, in a pipe.”
‘We are in such control of our destiny’
Fall River’s past lives in the woods, and so does its future.
Labossiere is proud of the fact that Fall River has preserved half its square mileage as a gift to future generations — and protected twice as much drinking water as the city currently needs.
“There are countries going to war for water, and it’s coming out of our ears,” Labossiere says. “We’ve castled it. We own on all sides of it. ... So we are in such control of our destiny.”
He sees a future, too, where the Bioreserve is known for more than some absurd legends. He hopes to maintain the successful partnership with the Appalachian Mountain Club’s volunteer hiking guides and have them adopt some trails. Green Futures and the Trustees hold regular events there, and are eager to show the lay of the land to new people. Labossiere knows that many of the Bioreserve’s trails need to be better curated and marked with directional blazes and interpretive signs at historic points, to make them more user- friendly to beginners — especially locals who’ve never been here before.
“There’s a lot of ways we can develop some entry-level experiences. We want our residents to be out here, because they pay the freight,” he says.
More than anything, he says, the Bioreserve needs a Discovery Center. He envisions a central place where visitors can arrive, park, get maps and information on all the trails nearby, meet forest interpreters, and plan a day of fun — then get information about where else to go and spend money in Fall River once they’re out of the woods. The Bioreserve currently has several parking lots for hikers, including at the State Forest headquarters on Slab Bridge Road in Freetown, but there’s no central information hub. He says they’ve been through a few site proposals, and he’s still working on it.
Once that happens, he says, it’ll be easier than ever for people in Fall River to enjoy the other half of their own city.
“After seeing the Bioreserve happen, it never occurs to me that money is the problem anymore,” Labossiere says. “It’s will, and a few people doing some hard work to gel it together. ... We need to be about the work of getting that Discovery Center so we can counteract that negative stuff. I guess it’ll always be there, but hopefully the noise we make will be louder.”
Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.
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5 easy places to start exploring Fall River’s Bioreserve
Dan Medeiros
The Herald News USA TODAY NETWORK
The Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve is an enormous area with miles of trails for everything from walking, hiking, mountain biking, snowshoeing, even dog-sledding. But where do you start if you’re still a beginner?
Here are five easy spots to check out on your own — plus a few tips, and some more opportunities to hike in a group.
Where to start
Tattapanum Trail: A simple loop trail a little over 1 mile long on the northwest corner of the North Watuppa Pond. Park along Wilson Road (rough road alert) and find a sign for the trail just before you reach the Watuppa Pond causeway.
Dr. Durfee’s Mill Pond: A 3-mile loop that starts near the mill pond on Dr. Nathan Durfee’s old property. Get there via Freetown’s High Street, which turns into Bell Rock Road. Leave your car in the parking lot on Bell Rock Road and walk about a mile south to the trailhead, or drive closer to the trailhead and leave your car along the side of the road — to find the trailhead, look for a tree sign marked “DD1.”
The Freetown Ledge: A 3-mile loop that takes you on both the upper and lower ledge roads around the old quarry pond. Approach from Freetown’s High Street, which turns into Bell Rock Road. Park on Bell Rock Road near a gate marked Ledge Road, or use the parking lot just a quarter-mile south.
Westgate Trail Loop: A 4-mile loop that takes you through the Copicut Woods on Trustees land. Get there via Westport on Blossom Road, and use the Copicut parking lot on Indian Town Road.
Homestead Loop: About 1 mile loop on city-owned land along the eastern side of North Watuppa Pond. Get there via Westport on Blossom Road, and use the parking lot near the reservation headquarters.
Go with a group
If you’re not comfortable going on your own, go with a group. Several organizations host free group walks through the Bioreserve to guide you. Follow them or subscribe to their newsletters to learn about upcoming events.
Green Futures, greenfutures.org (Facebook)
The Trustees of Reservations, thetrustees.org (Facebook)
Appalachian Mountain Club, amcsem.org (Facebook)
5 general tips
Trails here are sometimes not well marked, so you need a map (find one at the Freetown State Forest headquarters, or download one)
Let someone know where you’re going
Bring water and a snack h Wear bug spray and proper footwear
Start on a simple trail and pace yourself
Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.
Sunday, 07/11/2021 Page .A01 Copyright © 2021 GateHouse Media, Inc. Some Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use 7/11/2021
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ACTION ALERT - STOP SITING SOLAR ON OUR REMNANT FOREST AND AGRICULTURAL LANDS
INFO ALERT - Losing our New England countryside ....one solar panel at a time
In the race and scramble for alternative energy generation what is appropriate for locating solar arrays and what is not is rather fluid. Common sense tells us they shouldn't be sited on valuable forest or agriculture land ...but then we know common sense isn't really common.
Check this out - https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/solar-gone-wrong/
We support solar arrays properly sited without taxpayer subsidies. Such sites include brownfields and other industrially contaminated areas, capped landfills like Republic's Mount Trashmore in Fall River, the roof of the gigantic Amazon warehouse and other industrial and commercial buildings, powerline infrastructure, roadway surfaces, bridge superstructures, highway medians, parking lot solar canopies, etc., etc.
We are in the sixth extinction. The sixth mass extinction is happening worldwide now! More land connections are needed between fragmented wildlands if we are to keep our environment whole for ourselves and our wildlife neighbors. We need another Teddy Roosevelt or even Richard Nixon. Yes, Nixon. Under his administration came the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act.
It is still early in his presidency, but not looking good for Biden. - https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063734011
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