Presented by our Natural Solutions Working Group in cooperation with Sierra Club.
Protect Our Public Watershed Forests as Wildlands Now!
The recent surge in interest and concern about Massachusetts forests focuses on their ability to mitigate the global climate and biodiversity crises. Meanwhile, MA state agencies in charge of our public forests continue policies and practices that emphasize active management, i.e. commercial logging. This includes the 130,000 acres of public forest lands in the Quabbin, Ware, and Wachusett watersheds, which supplies water for over 40% of Massachusetts residents, including over 3 million people in Eastern MA. The Division of Water Supply Protection, charged with managing these watersheds, promotes logging in these forests. They claim that this enhances “forest resistance and resilience” against increasing natural disturbances (hurricanes and other climate related events). There is a better alternative that is rooted in current science that challenges these practices – leave forests as wild reserves.
Learn about the Massachusetts Sierra Club’s efforts to return the public forests of the Quabbin, Ware, and Wachusett watersheds to wildlands and how you can support this effort!
Speakers
Bill Stubblefield, Ph.D. has had a lifelong interest in ecology and evolution. He has an MA in Biology from the University of California and a PhD in Biology from Harvard University. Over the last few years, he has focused on the potential of natural solutions to the multiple planetary crises we now face, especially the potential of forests to accumulate carbon and preserve biodiversity. Currently, Bill devotes most of his time to climate activism through involvement with multiple environmental groups, including the Sierra Club’s Forest Protection Team, Wendell State Forest Alliance, and is a founder of the Forest Facts group that analyzes data and reports that drive public policy around forest management from economic, political, social and ecological perspectives. Bill has been instrumental in forming the MA Sierra Club’s campaign to permanently protect the public forests of the Quabbin, Ware and Wachusett watersheds as wildlands.
Lynne Man, Ph.D. is the Sierra Club Forest Protection Team founder and co-leader. She began the group in 2021 in response to a personal experience of state-sponsored logging in a public forest that she loved. Lynne will explain how and why the team came to develop the Watershed Protection Campaign and how members of the public can support this effort.
The video of this Deep Dialog can be seen here. The presentation is here.