Farther back from the walking trails of the state forest, shrubs and grasses give way to oaks and pitch pines, parts of a highly intact sandplain landscape that covers 5,350 acres in Edgartown and West Tisbury.

That flora and fauna diversity was at the center of a recent walk hosted by the Friends of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest, a plein air forum of Island naturalists giving a voice to the property’s many organisms, helping them to not go the way of the heath hen.