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Date: 5/11/2021
SOUTHAMPTON – The Southampton Open Space Committee is educating townspeople and landowners about conservation and open space.
The committee received a Neighborhood Outreach Grant from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation to help sponsor several events that are assisting in this education process.
According to Cindy Palmer, chair of the Open Space Committee, this is the second year the town was awarded this grant for a series of programs – the first being in 2019. COVID-19 prevented the committee from receiving a grant for programs in 2020.
The grants are essentially meant to support outreach activities that will “bring together citizens and neighbors” to focus on conservation-based planning for their land, or to gain knowledge about conservation.
Because Southampton is a Town Meeting form of government, the town has to vote at Town Meetings for conservation of properties that requires use of Community Preservation Act funding. “We need to have our citizens informed about why we would want to conserve our land,” said Palmer. “And it goes along with what it says in our master plan.”
The Open Space Committee have sponsored six different events this year with the help of the Neighborhood Outreach grant. Two of them, according to Palmer, are guided hikes. One was guided by a forester, and the other – which was scheduled for May 8 weather permitting – was guided by a “very knowledgeable” botanist.
The other four events are Open Space programs, according to Palmer. Two of them were designed for the entire town, one of them focused on wetlands – specifically toads and wood frogs – and the other one is focusing on protecting rainforests and other ecosystems in the context of climate change.
The event that involves rainforests will occur at Conant Park on May 14 at 1 p.m. in a socially-distanced manner. Scott Jackson, a University of Massachusetts Extension professor of environmental conservation, will be speaking about the effect of climate change on local forests.
The final two programs were invitation-only events that focused on certain target areas within Southampton that are considered large and undeveloped open space areas in the northwest corner of the town, as well as around Pomeroy Mountain. “There’s open space undeveloped close to the center of town,” said Palmer. “So we focused on those three geographic target areas, and invited the owners of lands there to attend these programs.” One of the programs was on how land appraisal was done, while the other one is focusing on land conservation and certain tax benefits.
“We’ve asked people to register for all of [these events],” said Palmer. “The reason is essentially because of COVID rules. We really needed to limit attendance, especially at the hikes.”
From a broad perspective, Palmer believes that all residents of the world should be cognizant of the fact that there are certain human factors that could affect the long range health of our planet. This includes residential development, as well as development of forest lands that are important ecosystems.
“Our wetlands are at great risk of pollution, and it affects our water supply … And it affects the diversity of the ecosystems within them that are so important,” Palmer added. “The change in our farmlands, and the fact that we’re losing some of those open spaces. That affects not only the beauty of our planet, but more importantly, the health of our soils, our air, and everything in between.”