08/28/2025
ACTIVITY ALERT - From Massachusetts Forest Watch and others.
Activities and actions to save our natural environment!
BERKSHIRE NATIONAL PARK FOR PEOPLE, BIODIVERSITY, AND CLIMATE
PLACE: Bascom Lodge at Mount Greylock State Reservation
DATE: Sunday, August 31, 2025
TIME: 5:30 - 6:30 pm
Presentation is open to the public and free of charge.
The science is clear: we need natural and near-natural areas to stabilize climate, prevent massive biodiversity loss, and benefit public health and well-being. Yet, less than 4% of New England, and even less of Massachusetts, meets this protection standard. Can we address this gap? Yes! National parks have provided this protection since the designation of Yellowstone in 1872 as the world’s first national park. A campaign to designate a new generation of national parks offers a positive way to highlight important places, connect the public to our natural heritage, and enact strong legislative measures to provide permanent protection.
Michael Kellett will talk about a proposal to create 100 new national parks across America — including ten in New England. This presentation will feature a spectacular Berkshire National Park, which would reach from the Connecticut River Valley to New York’s Taconic Mountains, and from the Vermont border to the Litchfield Hills in Connecticut.
Michael is the founding executive director of RESTORE: The North Woods, a New England-based nonprofit organization established in 1992. He has 40 years of experience advocating for national parks, wilderness, natural forests, free-flowing rivers, and imperiled wildlife. In 1994, he developed the original proposal for a 3.2-million-acre Maine Woods National Park, which laid the groundwork for the 2016 designation of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument by President Obama. He co-authored three pending Massachusetts bills that would designate 80% of state public lands as permanent parks and reserves protected from logging. He has visited more than 260 national park areas across the country.
For more information, visit the Bascom Lodge events page.
https://www.bascomlodge.net/events
*********
YOU CAN HELP PROTECT OUR STATE-OWNED LANDS
Today, not one single acre of our Massachusetts publicly owned state forests, watersheds, or wildlife management areas is permanently protected from “active forest management,” including logging, burning, and herbicide application.
What we need most now is more co-sponsors for our three forest protection bills, to show public support for this effort. You can help!
SOME SIMPLE ACTIONS TO TAKE
1. Write and/or call your state Representative and Senator (found here) and ask them to co-sponsor our bills. The ask is simple: “Please co-sponsor the bills H.952, H.953, and H.1048, which would protect much of our state-owned lands as permanent reserves, with similar protection to that of our National Parks.” If no one answers, you can leave a voicemail.
Sample Email
Subject line: Please co-sponsor H. 952, H.953, and H.1048
To: (your State Representative or State Senator)
Dear (your lawmaker),
Please co-sponsor the bills H.952, H.953, and H.1048, which would protect much of our state-owned lands as permanent reserves, with similar protection to that of our National Parks.
Sincerely yours,
your name
your town
2. sign here as an individual and/or an organization to ask the Massachusetts Legislature to ensure the passage of these bills. We will bring all the signatures to the hearing. This is the only letter to the decision-makers for you to sign that we will submit as testimony for the bills.
3. Sign the petition here from the Sierra Club Forest Protection Team: Forests are essential! calling for an end to logging on public lands of the Quabbin, Wachusett, and Ware watersheds
4. The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) intends to clearcut 175 acres of mature white pines in Manual F. Correllus State Forest on Martha's Vineyard. Sign the petition to Stop the Clearcut. This is one of our public forest “reserves,” where logging is supposed to be prohibited.
Attached are our updated fact sheets on the three forest bills produced by our campaign. Please use them to reference talking points, to offer as hand-outs, or to send to your lawmakers.
More information on our Massachusetts land protection efforts can be found here: Save Massachusetts Forests
Best regards,
Michael Kellett, RESTORE: The North Woods
Janet Sinclair, Save Massachusetts Forests
BACKGROUND
Our bills this session would create more forest reserves on state-owned lands and give them permanent protection. They would update century-old public land policies written before we recognized the climate crisis and global loss of biodiversity.
H.953: AN ACT RELATIVE TO FOREST PROTECTION
sponsored by Representative Carmine Gentile, would designate 312,000 acres of forest lands controlled by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) as parks or reserves.
H.952: AN ACT RELATIVE TO WATERSHED FOREST PROTECTION
sponsored by Representative Carmine Gentile, would designate over 100,000 acres of state-owned watershed lands as parks or reserves.
H.1048: AN ACT RELATIVE TO INCREASED PROTECTION WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREAS
sponsored by Representative Danillo A. Sena, would designate 50,000 acres of state-owned Wildlife Management Areas as reserves.
Together these bills would permanently designate 462,000 acres as reserves or parks - 15% of all Massachusetts forests — a level of protection that now exists for only 1% of the state’s land base, similar to how our National Parks are protected. More information on our Massachusetts land protection efforts can be found here: Save Massachusetts Forests
Information about the Mohawk Trail Wood Lands Partnership - Are the best interests of taxpayers, our environment, the public's health, and our towns being represented and best served by this proposal?
