Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 4/25/2022
WALES – The Norcross Wildlife Foundation is slowly coming back from COVID-19.
Executive Director Ed Hood said Norcross cut back on their programming due to the coronavirus pandemic but have some school groups coming back this spring with programs such as building birdhouses and bat houses that children take home, a guided tour at the sanctuary, making footprints of animals and learning how to identify them.
“We usually have 4,000 school kids a year come at Norcross,” Hood explained. “In April of 2020, we had to cancel all of those programs and stopped for the spring season that year. We still had our trails open through the [coronavirus] pandemic because they were outside, but no school programs during the 2020-2021 school year.” Norcross is only just beginning to start up their programs which will still take place outside under a tent to keep everyone spread out.
The Norcross Wildlife Foundation was established by Arthur D. Norcross in 1964 as a private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to conserve wildlife primarily by protecting critical habitats in central southern Massachusetts. Norcross inherited a 100-acre woodlot on Tupper Hill in Wales in 1916, and then began to amass over 2,000 acres of land through purchase and barter, which became the core of today’s Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary. Hood said, “[Arthur D. Norcross] actually began thinking of this land as an intentional sanctuary for wildlife in 1939, the date we attribute to the informal creation of what we are today.”
The sanctuary is part of the Norcross Wildlife Foundation which has grown to over 8,000 acres of forests, meadows and wildlands. Norcross has 2.5 miles of trails that visitors can utilize as a gateway to a series of different New England environments like the Red Maple Swamp, a hickory grove, a pitch-pine oak forest, a pine barren, a little bluestem meadow and a rare stand of white cedars. Plus, they have two new trail bridges over Dunham Brook.
Hood has been at Norcross Wildlife for 18 months. He worked at the Opacum Land Trust for seven years then came to Norcross in 2020. Hood told Reminder Publishing the Board of Directors who oversee the Norcross Foundation determined in 2020 to begin changing the foundation to be more focused on applying new environmental science to their care of the sanctuary and developing new programs for visitors – something they will be doing in the coming years for people to learn about the environment, about protecting wildlife and in particular, climate change.
“My being hired by Norcross 18 months ago was for the purpose of helping the board begin that new vision,” Hood responded. “Having more diversity in nature, while also including a more diverse audience to the sanctuary is an important effort that we’re beginning to work on figuring out how to do.”
He went on to say, “Wales is a relatively remote town. People who don’t live in Wales or locally don’t know about the sanctuary and we want to make sure that folks who want to get out into nature know that they can come here, participate in our programs and hike our trails.”
In the future, Hood sees Norcross doing more workshops, programs and events, but during this current year he said there won’t be any big events taking place, other than getting all the school groups back and getting people onto their trails.
As of April 15, the Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary trails are open to the public Mondaysthrough Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. until Thanksgiving, excluding holiday weekends.
For current information, visit their website at norcrosswildlife.org.