“Why Stewardship Matters”

We live in an area with extraordinary diversity of natural resources. In this region, geology, hydrology, and climate have combined to create a landscape with remarkable biological richness, ranging from concentrations of rare and endangered species to moose, fisher, bobcat, and coyote. The largest Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) in Massachusetts are located here because of this concentration of resources.

This column will explore some of the most interesting aspects of our natural resources and what we as residents and landowners can do maintain and improve them. The column will appear bi-weekly and will be written by local environmentalists, as well as other experts. It is sponsored by the Squannassit/Petapawag ACEC Stewardship Committee, a group of volunteers who, with the assistance of the Nashua River Watershed Association, are helping to preserve, restore and enhance the special resources of this area.

In the recent past the ecological richness of this area has been eroded. Wildlife habitat and biodiversity have been lost to suburban expansion and to an invasion of exotic plants, such as buckthorn and bittersweet, which displace more diverse and valuable native plants.

The Stewardship Committee believes that these disturbing trends can be changed because each of us can affect our environment in ways that, taken together, will make an impact. Invasions of plants can be slowed, and even stopped, if we learn to identify and control them before they take over. The way we landscape our yards can enhance, rather than take away from, our native ecology.

Stewardship is not just about taking care of our property, it is about how we interact with our landscape and our ecosystem. It is about understanding and responding to the natural world around us. The more we learn about our environment, the better we will be as stewards of it. To that end, some of these articles will be about the animals and the ecology around us. Others will be about identifying and managing the worst invasives in our area. Still others will present ideas on how to manage our properties to encourage wildlife and to enhance the overall ecosystem.

Our goal has been to help pass on a landscape and ecosystem that will be as rich or richer than the one we live in today, but the lesson of stewardship we have gained is that the more we learn about our environment and the more we work to restore and enhance it, the richer our own lives become. Stewardship of the environment is really not work at all, but rather its own reward.

In addition to these articles, the Stewardship Committee has set up a website, www.squannassit.org, which has links to related information sources. Through the website you can also join an interactive email group where questions can be asked and where environmental issues can be discussed. We encourage you to follow this column, to visit our website, and to join us in stewardship. Stewardship does matter.
Bob Pine on behalf of the ACEC stewardship Committee

Bob Pine is a landscape architect and a geotechnical engineer. He is a principal of Pine and Swallow Environmental. He has been involved with local and regional conservation and environmental planning issues in this area for 32 years. He currently serves on the Boards of the Groton Conservation Trust, the Groton Land Foundation, and the Nashua River Watershed Association.