Muddy Pond
Wilderness Preserve

In the center of the suburbs in Kingston, MA, Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve offers a wild refuge for nature, wildlife, and people.

The Northeast Wilderness Trust established the Preserve in 2018, and has been working to re-wild the land and connect students and residents with wilderness. The Preserve is about a half-hour south of Boston in Kingston, MA , and sits at the northernmost reaches of the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens. This forest type is globally rare, and found only in New Jersey, Long Island, and Southeastern Massachusetts and its islands. The Pine Barrens are dominated by pitch pine and black, white, and red oak trees.

While Massachusetts’ Pine Barrens survived European colonization because their nutrient-poor soils were not suitable for agriculture, they are now very rare due to suburban development. Several species live only in the unique Coastal Plain Ponds of Southeast Massachusetts, and are critically endangered or threatened.

South of Route 44, the 322-acre Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve is one of the remaining pieces of a forest that was once vast and unbroken. Today, the Pine Barrens are small, separated parcels. And as the forest habitat disappears, so do the opportunities for people to connect with nature and experience the native landscape.

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Through the summer, rare and endangered plants found only in this kind of ecosystem emerge from the waters of Muddy Pond. They bloom as fall sets in, while birds stop by for a rest as they migrate south.

Muddy Pond offers a redeeming glimmer of hope in that patches of these forests do still exist; they are not yet gone forever. The Preserve is open to the public for low-impact recreation such as hiking, bird-watching, photography, and nature study.

Within the Preserve, the nearby hum of traffic is muffled by songs of frogs, birds, or crickets. In early spring, amphibians lay their eggs, wildflowers blossom, and turtles dig nests. Through the summer, rare and endangered plants found only in this kind of ecosystem emerge from the waters of Muddy Pond. They bloom as fall sets in, while birds stop by for a rest as they migrate south.

Community Conservation at Muddy Pond

Re-wilding is the practice of allowing ecosystems to evolve and change organically, without human management. Yet while the law of nature reigns at Muddy Pond, wilderness conservation and the future of wild places depend on committed stewards of the land and a local culture of reverence for untamed nature. Find out more about citizen science at Muddy Pond below!

Joe Falconeiri, Northeast Wilderness Trust’s Southern New England Land Steward, works with local schools and organizations to jumpstart the re-wilding process while teaching about wilderness values at Muddy Pond.

Falconeiri works with residents to haul out trash, retire old trails, and install signs. More than 75 students have joined Northeast Wilderness Trust to lend a hand and connect with the landscape. Teenagers are becoming familiar with the native habitat of their region as they gather data for biology class. Dozens of adults have joined hikes and volunteer days, too.

These citizens are demonstrating rewilding in action by cultivating relationships to place founded in care, wonder, and respect. Rather than treating the land as a resource to be used and extracted, they approach it as a source of knowledge, excitement, and beauty.