Members of the Tuesday Trail Team, WLCT staff and board piled into cars on a rainy Tuesday in July to spend a few hours celebrating 10 years of Trail Team with a visit to a spectacular Mass Audubon site.
In February, as we plotted Trail Team projects for the year, we thought about how to recognize the hard work of our all-volunteer trail team over the past 10 years. In my 2 years at WLCT, Trail Team has been willing to tackle any project presented to them. The Tuesday Trail Team does a lot of trail maintenance (this year that included blazing new trails at Westport Woods, almost 2 miles out from the parking lot) and public-facing property upkeep. They also remove invasives in preparation for replanting, plant plugs and saplings, and other restoration projects. We wanted to celebrate their hard work and provide insight and inspiration through an off site visit.
Audubon’s Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary seemed like a perfect site to visit. A property still in the early stages of restoration, the partnership that is restoring the property has reclaimed agricultural land and rebuilt a living, changeable natural habitat over several hundred acres.
Lunches, Rain Coats, Bug Spray and Water Bottles
Audubon educator Kim Snyder met us at the parking lot and took over 20 of us for a 2+ mile walk through restored sand bogs and warm-season grass meadows, over re-dug brooks now respawning herring and American eel, and through an experimental Eastern Atlantic Cedar swamp. We finished our morning with lunch at picnic tables overlooking pitch pines and an All-Persons Adaptive Trail.
Trail Team members commented on the variety of plants (and birds) that Audubon has successfully reintroduced. There was much happy chatter at lunch about WLCT’s restoration projects, from the 10-year-old meadows at Herb Hadfield, to the newer meadow at Dunham’s Brook and the new, forested land at Westport Woods.
Mass Audubon describes Tidmarsh as “a landscape of hope, where promising land conservation approaches revive degraded ecosystems into beautiful, diverse, regenerative landscapes. The restoration and conservation of this property has powerful potential to boost nature’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.”
My hope is that the Trail Team and all of Westport Land Conservation Trust’s supporters see our projects in the same light. Come join us!
Tuesday Trail Team meets Tuesdays at 9 am. We welcome all volunteers who are want to help maintain property trails, fight invasives, plant natives, and have a good time! Please contact Land Steward Nate McCullin.