Sunday Telegram, November 17, 1991, C2
Roger Leo Editorial Writer
Donors, land trust help preserve wild acreage
Cascade West, the 125 acres off Howard Street in Holden and Worcester near the Paxton line recently given to the Greater Worcester Community Land Trust, forms a bridge across space and time.
The parcel joins together several conservation properties as well as the region's past, present and future.
It is a physical link in a greenbelt that includes several already protected parcels of open space – including Cascades Park, Boynton Park and a vast tract of city watershed land along Reservoir Street. Without the parcel, Boynton Park would remain cut off from other conservation land, of dwindling value for wildlife as development chopped away at its now-wooded surroundings.
Fascinating elements of area history are entwined in the land, as well, from recollections of an 18th-century landowner to more recent records of the burial of a beloved pet at a favorite spot in the 1940's.
IMPORTANT ROLE
And it is a gift that might not have ended up as conservation land without the existence of the private, nonprofit land trust.
Land trust directors – among many conservationists – for years have given high priority to protecting Cascade West.
On-and-off negotiations took place about five years ago between the land trust and the property's owners – but no agreement was reached. A few weeks ago, Karl L. Briel, Albert R. Jones and Joan Whiting, donated the land to the trust.
TRAILS EXIST
On a visit to the site last week, Allen W. Fletcher, land trust president, found that people had been walking on what appeared to be established trails through woods that included stands of white pine on a hilltop, beech and ash on the hillsides, and mixed trees along several freshets and pools in shallow gullies.
“We haven't set a policy yet, but the land will always be open for people to walk on,” he said.
Besides footprints, he also saw signs of wildlife – including tracks of deer and squirrels, various birds – including chickadees, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and blue jays, and a rich habitat that local naturalists say is unique in the area.
Chris Phillips, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Broad Meadow Brook Sanctuary in Worcester, is delighted with the gift.
Phillips said, “For wildlife, the land has almost unfathomable value. If the middle of these three portions were developed, not only would the middle link be missing, but the edge of both remaining links would be lost to wildlife.
RETURN FOR BREEDING
“From the smaller creatures' point of view, vernal pools in upland habitat like that have very little protection under the law. A house could go where a vernal pool is, and all the spotted salamanders for a mile in any direction would still live, but their breeding spot would be gone and their population would for all intents and purposes be dead.
“The area is also habitat for whit tailed deer, coyotes passing through and otters. Barred owls nest in a swamp on the property, in large trees with hollow cavities. Pileated woodpeckers are in there – and they need 50 acres minimum for a territory. Broad-winged hawks also need large undisturbed areas, and they're up there,” Phillips said.
He listed a mouthful of other birds occurring on the site , including the state's only remaining goldwinged warbler,winter wrens, yellow-bellied sapsuckers and Louisiana and northern water thrushes.
“It's far and away the richest, most diverse and productive wildlife area in Greater Worcester.”
While following feeder brooks uphill in early spring – in search of vernal pools – Phillips was really impressed with the variety of wildflowers in the woods, including spring beauties, bloodroots, jack-in-the-pulpits, wild leeks, spicebush, striped wintergreen, trilium, blue cohosh, dogtooth violet, pink ladyslipper and trailing arbutus.
LOCAL HISTORY
As for local history, in the 1940's Lincoln Kinnicutt used to walk his dog through the woods and stop to read on a stone bench in a clearing in Cascade West by a brook below Boynton Park. When the dog died, Kinnicutt buried it in Cascade West and placed a sign – probably wooden – on a pine tree. It read: “The sanctuary – please respect it.”
A couple of centuries earlier – in 1746 – Joseph Howard moved to Howard Street when he was 4. A written account of the time reported “deer horns” were found on the ground. “Nuts were very plentiful and also grey squirrels, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), wild turkeys and wild cats (either bobcats or mountain lions) and now and then wolves and bears. Rattlesnakes were plentiful and pigeons were caught in nets.”
The land today is not as wild as in Howard's day – but it is among the wildest in the Worcester area, and so will remain, thanks to the generosity of a few property owners and the existence of the land trust.
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