If you’re interested in natural history, the Connecticut River Valley is a great place to live. The combination of geology, hydrology, human history and climate create a remarkable diversity of habitats. In Northampton, where most of my conservation work has focused, you can explore 40 different types of natural communities — from rocky summits and cliffs to open marshes, floodplain forests and rivers.
This variety, along with the Connecticut River’s role as a migratory pathway for wildlife, contributes to an unusually broad diversity of plants and animals, including several endangered species. These rare species often depend on special habitats with conditions that are difficult for most plants and animals to tolerate. Bogs, for instance, are waterlogged, nutrient-poor and acidic. Floodplain forests contain a unique mix of species, all of which can tolerate weeks or even months of flooding.
What’s wonderful about the river valley is that we can explore many of these habitats on conservation land that’s open to the public. For many of us, these conservation areas — Fitzgerald Lake in Northampton, Amethyst Brook in Amherst, Mount Warner in Hadley, for example — have become favorite places. They’re where we walk with our family, meet friends, watch birds and recharge our spirits. They’ve become part of our sense of place and part of the valley’s identity.
Conserving the unique landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley, like the Amethyst Brook Conservation Area, protects important habitat for wildlife, and also has provided an enduring sense of place for generations of people. Richard Goldman
But it may come as a surprise that the protection of land in the valley is a relatively new phenomenon. Although our region has been ahead of the curve on many fronts, protecting conservation land wasn’t one of them.
To be fair, there were a few important acquisitions in our area early on. The Mount Tom State Reservation, for instance, was Massachusetts’ first state reservation, with 1,500 acres set aside in 1902. Its protection was mainly thanks to the efforts of Northampton’s Christopher Clarke, an early advocate of conserving land.
A few years later, with a vision to create another state reservation, 81-year old Clarke partnered with Joseph Skinner to buy the Summit House and land on the Mount Holyoke Range to keep it out of the hands of speculators.
A few other important landscapes in our area were protected before 1970, but most of the conservation areas that have become so meaningful to many of us — including the bulk of the Mount Holyoke Range — were protected during the last 50 years.
The year 1970 was crucial in the history of conservation. That April, in response to air and water pollution, the impacts of DDT and rampant development, the first Earth Day took place, igniting an awareness and appreciation for the environment worldwide.
During the next five years, major legislation passed at the state and federal levels, and here in the valley, local citizens banded together to protect important landscapes in their communities. As federal aid became available to state environmental agencies and municipalities, a new era in open space protection began.
