The following letter was sent to the Oak Bluffs land bank advisory board.

We are writing on behalf of a much larger group of concerned Oak Bluffs and Island residents.

We respectfully request that the advisory board oppose the land bank’s efforts to build a 1.4-mile-long steel wire fence in the center of one of Oak Bluffs’ cherished natural landmarks, Trade Wind Field Preserve.

By its own admission, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank paid insufficient attention to Trade Wind for many years after acquiring the property. This included not implementing certain of its own management plan maintenance guidelines. For most of this period the land bank also did not enforce its rules for visitors. As a result, segments of the general public became accustomed to straying from designated trails. The land bank concedes that it did not satisfactorily explain to the public why — confusingly — walking on the taxiway and runway was prohibited on the one hand, when on the other hand it encouraged airplane landings, kite flying and model airplane flying in those same areas, as well as activity by the land bank’s own heavy machinery.

It has only been three or four years since the land bank began properly maintaining Trade Wind and conscientiously explaining and promoting its visitor rules. The result has been a dramatic improvement in usage patterns, and a dramatic improvement in the ecology of Trade Wind.

Despite strong cooperation on the part of the vast majority of users, the land bank now seeks to construct a 1.4-mile-long steel fence in the very center of this stunningly beautiful property. It is incomprehensible to our town and island community that the land bank should undertake this aggressively retrograde measure when such dramatic improvements have been seen at Trade Wind in this short span of time. An outpouring of opposition to the fence has been evident from attendance at recent town advisory board meetings, including a petition that was signed by several hundred persons in just three days.

We understand that the land bank’s priority is conservation. But the land bank professes other goals for its properties. Its goals for Trade Wind are spelled out very clearly in its management plan. In fact, nature conservation is but one of five areas of planning concern. The unsightly fence would directly violate the part of the management plan addressing recreation and aesthetics.

By seeking to build this fence, not only is the land bank abandoning its responsibility to maintain these attractive views, it will have taken active steps to ruin these views.

It would also violate other goals in the management plan.

Even if the land bank was not violating its own management plan by building this fence, the fact is that this decision is premature. It makes no sense to launch such a radical and unpopular project before taking time to study the positive outcomes of improvements in visitor cooperation in combination with enhanced land bank efforts to maintain the property.

Therefore we respectfully request that the town advisory board oppose the construction of a fence at Trade Wind and instead direct the land bank to adhere to all the goals of its approved management plan to promote balanced usage, and focus its efforts on studying the ecology of Trade Wind with a specific view toward understanding the health of its environment and producing scientific data to support any future management projects that effect the public’s use of the preserve.

Mary Austin
Oak Bluffs

This letter was also signed by Sara Barnes, Anne Bennett, Rita Brown, Vasha Brunelle, Rose Cecil, Phil Cordella, Marsha Eldridge, Maureen Hall, Emma HallBilsback, Jane Hawkes, Mark Jenkins, Karen Krowski, Jack Krowski, Bob Lehman, Nora Love, Idalyn Macchia Gilstad, Philip Pankiewicz, Patricia Quast-French, and Richard Seelig.