Massachusetts Archives - Northeast Wilderness Trust

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Rate That Snag!

July 9, 2025/in Featured News, Newts from the Field

A frequent sight on Northeast Wilderness Trust’s (NEWT) forever-wild preserves and easements is coarse woody debris (CWD). CWD is the wood that accumulates in forests as trees and shrubs die. Tree mortality is a natural part of forest ecosystems, and the resulting CWD is a crucial ecological element that provides homes for insects, birds, and mammals and recycles nutrients back into forest soils.

One of the most recognizable forms of CWD is standing dead trees, also called “snags.” Managed timberlands often lack snags because logging operations prioritize tidy, navigable landscapes. But on NEWT properties, they are a common and welcome feature of “messy” old forests that support greater species diversity and sequester more carbon.

The forests at NEWT’s Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve in southeastern Massachusetts are no exception. Since coming under forever-wild protection in 2018, Muddy Pond’s 322 acres in Kingston have been on the march toward old growth. Part of that rewilding process involves the death of old or weakened trees, which remain standing at Muddy Pond to continue contributing, as they did in life, to the Preserve’s ecology.

Changing the Conversation

Among the hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, and amphibians that call them home, Muddy Pond’s snags also have a two-legged admirer: NEWT’s Southern New England Land Steward Joe Falconeiri.

You might call Falconeiri a dead-wood devotee. When hosting groups of students or volunteers at the Preserve, or giving talks in the wider area about wildlands stewardship, Falconeiri always sings the praises of CWD as a vital but overlooked—and misunderstood—feature of healthy forest ecosystems. He finds that for most people, from high-school students to arborists, dead trees are eyesores or risks. And while he acknowledges that dead trees in suburban settings can become hazardous depending on their surroundings and proximity to humans and human-made structures, he contends that this obscures their ecosystem role. A group of dead and dying trees at his home in Massachusetts, for example, hosts nesting Northern Flickers, a woodpecker species.

“Snags are anything but ‘hazardous’ when looking at them from an ecological perspective,” Falconeiri said. “Within the forest, they are the opposite of hazardous. Public safety is an important part of the conversation in suburban environments, but we need to define what ‘hazardous’ really means. This is why wilderness education in our communities and region is so critical.”

Part of that education involves encouraging people and communities to rethink their view of dead trees as blemishes on the landscape. If we learn to admire snags in the same way we admire a towering hemlock or a majestic oak, might we in turn become more comfortable with CWD and the other aspects of unmanaged forests that promote biodiversity and greater carbon storage?

To that end, Falconeiri has photographed some of the most eye-catching dead trees at Muddy Pond. Check out the photos below and their captions to see how this snag specialist ranks his favorite specimens.

Joe’s Rating: 10/10

“This beauty stands out in the middle of the forest on a high point. With a few large woodpecker cavities visible, and a smooth, monotone, barkless veneer, it is the perfect perch for local owls, hawks, and Muddy Pond’s visiting Bald Eagle.”

Joe’s Rating: 8.2/10

“This short and stout coniferous snag showed lots of insect and carpenter ant activity. It would be a perfect dinner or snack spot for the local Prairie Warbler or Downy Woodpecker, or even a forage opportunity for a fox.”

Joe’s Rating: 8.4/10

“Old eastern white pine with multiple cavities showing the grand beauty of standing decomposition and decay. This grandiose testament to Nature’s cycles rises out of the black huckleberry understory below. Will we listen to the life lessons it offers?”

Joe’s Rating: 7.5/10

“Major cavity sitting high in old oak tree deep in the forest. Stable and sturdy hardwood snags not only make a nice nesting spot for woodpecker species; they can be welcome homes to secondary cavity nesters such as raccoons and owls.”

Joe’s Rating: 9/10.

“Multiple woodpecker cavities and a partially hollow trunk equal great potential for biodiversity. The cavities offer real estate for secondary nesters such as Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, squirrels, and owls. My good ol’ friend the Blue Jay and others may also use the cavities for food storage.”

NEWT and Native Land Conservancy Partner to Protect Wampanoag Lands

December 12, 2024/in Community Conservation, Featured News, Press Releases Massachusetts

This story first appeared in the Cape Cod Times on November 18, 2024.

KINGSTON, MA—With a recent gift of 33 acres of land in Kingston from a regional land trust, Native Land Conservancy in Mashpee now holds almost 100 acres across seven Massachusetts towns.

Prior to this gift, the Conservancy held titles to about 65 acres in Mashpee, Yarmouthport, Easton, Barnstable, New Salem, and Aquinnah.

“This donation from Northeast Wilderness Trust serves to deepen our relationship as neighbors,” said Conservancy Founding President Ramona Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. “And gives us the opportunity to care for these lands in our fullest capacity as Indigenous land protectors.”

The 322-acre Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve, owned by Northeast Wilderness Trust, that abuts the 33 acres of land recently gifted to Native Land Conservancy.

The 33 acres joins with the Conservancy’s 32-acre Wampanoag Common Lands at Muddy Pond in Kingston and the abutting 322-acre Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve, owned by the trust, also in Kingston.

“Working together with the Native Land Conservancy has been an enriching experience for Northeast Wilderness Trust,” said Jon Leibowitz, the trust president and CEO. “Our partnership with NLC has secured habitat and freedom for the wild creatures who call these places home.” The trust is based in Vermont.

The newly donated lands represent a portion of the Wampanoag’s ancestral homelands, according to the Conservancy. The land is also part of the rare Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens and habitat for four-legged, winged, and finned creatures including garter snakes, bats, coyotes, red-tailed hawks, and wood frogs.

What will the Conservancy do with the land?

The Conservancy plans to permanently conserve the 33 acres, according to a press release.

Alongside the donation, the trust is also conveying a forever-wild conservation easement, which is pending approval from the commonwealth. The easement would be located on the trust’s Muddy Pond Wilderness Preserve.

In reciprocation, the Conservancy will convey a forever-wild conservation easement on the lands gifted by the Trust.

A conservation easement, according to the National Conservation Easement Database, is a legal agreement between a landowner and a conservation organization or government agency that limits how a property can be developed. A conservation easement can protect the land’s conservation values, such as the quality of water or the preservation of forests and agricultural lands.

Conservancy holds land in areas across the state

Among its purchases, in 2023, the Conservancy bought the Aquinnah Shop Restaurant and surrounding land on Martha’s Vineyard for $2 million, with plans to return the land in perpetuity to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

NEWT and Partners Convene in Boston to Make the Case for Rewilding

November 7, 2024/in Event, Featured News, People, Rewilding Massachusetts

“How do we create a more habitable world for our children, for our grandchildren, and for all the species with whom we share this beautiful planet” at a time of climate change and an accelerating extinction crisis? This was the central question posed by Kelsey Wirth, Founder of Mothers Out Front, at a panel and reception event convened by Northeast Wilderness Trust (NEWT) last month.

There is, of course, no single solution to these multidimensional challenges, but NEWT leaders and key partners shared the power and promise of forever-wild land conservation with a sold-out audience at WBUR CitySpace in Boston, Massachusetts.

NEWT President and CEO Jon Leibowitz argued that to preserve the Northeast’s natural heritage and the wellbeing of future human and nonhuman generations, we should intentionally create room for Nature to do what it did on its own for millions of years before human intervention: evolve freely, with forests growing old, fostering biodiversity, and storing massive amounts of carbon.

This may sound like a straightforward proposal, but in Leibowitz’s words, rewilding is an “incredibly underutilized” conservation tool. Though New England is more than 80-percent forested, just 3.3 percent of these forests are protected in perpetuity as wildlands, where Nature calls the shots. Increasing this number by creating more wilderness preserves means “to work with Nature, rather than against it,” Leibowitz added. Rewilding “restores ecosystems not through control or manipulation, but by trusting in Nature’s innate resilience and proven ability to find stability.”

Rare Plants Thrive on the Rewilding Shores of Muddy Pond

August 8, 2024/in Featured News, Rewilding, Stewardship Massachusetts

The Plymouth Rose Gentian (Sabatia kennedyana) shines like a pink sun when it blooms. This rare species occurs on shorelines and in wetlands from southern Rhode Island to the north shore of Massachusetts. The Gentian’s limited range and sensitivity to changes in water level and quality, as well as the destruction of wetlands along the Atlantic Coast, threaten the species: in Rhode Island it is endangered, and in Massachusetts it is classified as uncommon and of special conservation concern.