Forests Are Essential!
End Logging On Public Lands Of the Quabbin, Wachusett, and Ware Watersheds
Quabbin Reservoir, Photo by Chris Matera
Join us in a quest to protect the Quabbin, Wachusett, and Ware River basins from logging!
Almost a century ago, the towns of Dana, Prescott, Enfield, and Greenwich were cleared to create a massive water supply for Boston, the Quabbin Reservoir. Now, its forested watersheds constitute an almost-wilderness. With your help, we hope to protect it from the logging that has been the state’s signature program to maintain water quality. Many aspects of this program are questionable, from where the wood goes, to who benefits, to how effective it is in protecting water quality.
The Forest Protection Team aims to preserve the watershed forests as wildlands for current and future generations.
- Forests are the only large-scale means to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which they do for free!
- This area of thousands of acres is an important carbon sink. If left to grow old, the amount of carbon sequestered has the potential to increase up to 4 times its current capacity.
- The public forests in the Quabbin, Wachusett, and Ware watersheds contribute to key wildlife corridors that protect biodiversity habitats extending from northern to southern New England. These forests contain large amounts of continuous BioMap core habitat, high carbon density, and areas marked as Priority Habitats of Rare Species in the Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program.
- Forests maintain a clean and constant water supply for Eastern MA communities
- Current climate science provides substantial evidence that forests managed with minimal human intervention offer the best climate and ecosystem benefits, including clean water.
- For decades logging has been integral to the state’s water management strategies; every decade, the state harvests 25% of each watershed public forest. There are no plans to reduce this amount in the “Forests as Climate Solutions Initiative.”
- More rigorous scientific data are needed to prove that this is justified when the many benefits to unmanaged forests, especially in a time of climate and biodiversity crisis are well documented and widely accepted.
In 2023, the Wildlands in New England report was released with updated data on land protection across the Northeast. Sixty-four percent of Massachusetts is forested but only 3.5% of Massachusetts forests are currently preserved to the standards of the Wildlands in New England report: “Wildland is free-willed, being allowed to develop without significant human intervention once designated.” The vast majority of those MA Wildlands are owned by the state and only protected by administrative designation. As explored in the report, Wildlands destination “does not imply the absence of humans, but only their lack of dominance in the landscape.” There are many benefits to setting aside more land as Wildlands including intrinsic value, supporting biodiversity, storing carbon, and enhancing landscape resilience.