Anniversary: Conservation Is Crux of Mission Across 40 Years
By IAN FEIN
Forty years ago a group of Island residents formed the Vineyard
Conservation Society to fend off a development threat in the
Lobsterville moors of Aquinnah. The group convinced the state to put a
limited access designation on West Basin Road, effectively prohibiting
any future subdivision or development in the area and preserving the
untouched strip of land that runs along the northern edge of Menemsha
Pond today.
The Vineyard Conservation Society met Thursday for its annual
meeting and to hear about the Marine Life Census, an ambitious and
inspiring global project that is attempting to catalogue and identify
every life form in the planet's oceans.
The census puts Vineyard conservation efforts into a global context
where scientists around the world are racing to protect marine life.
The dire forecast for the future of the Vineyard environment, signed onto by the Island's major conservation groups 10 years ago this week, was wrong. Dramatically, happily wrong.
Among other things, the 1997 white paper predicted the Vineyard would be built out within eight years, and that only a little over 25 per cent of Island land would be protected by 2005. History has proven these figures to be way off the mark.
As a part of the Vineyard Conservation Society’s Clean Water Initiative in partnership with the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, this season’s program will focus on the health of Vineyard waters. On Sunday Nov. 9, Islanders of all ages are invited to the come to Crow Hollow Farm (located off of New Lane in West Tisbury). This family-friendly walk will proceed around the farm and out to the pretty Pear Tree Point on the Tisbury Great Pond. Participants and kids will have the chance to meet and learn about the ponies, land and water.
Some people, if they shared an award with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be pleased to think they’d made it, big-time. Not Brendan O’Neill. He was gratified to think he’d made it, small-time.
Mr. Kennedy, of course, is famous both for his family name and for his record as a crusading and aggressive environmental lawyer. He plays on a national stage.
Can’t wait for those fresh salad greens? Well, by the first of May, a mere 45 days away, you should be able to drop by Cronig’s and purchase a 10-ounce bag of North Tabor Farm’s salad greens, and the season will be under way.
On May 31, the Polly Hill Arboretum and the Vineyard Conservation Society will welcome Paul Tukey, founder of SafeLawns.org, an international coalition promoting environmentally friendly lawn care, for a lively discussion on lawns.
There are times when it’s hard to see the environment for the trees.
Look across the Martha’s Vineyard landscape and that mantle of woods, growing where once the land was substantially denuded, and things look pretty good.
But beneath that green canopy, as Vineyard Conservation Society executive director Brendan O’Neill points out, are 78 parcels of land, ranging in size between 20 acres and 100 acres, which remain undeveloped, but also unprotected from development.
It is one of the enduring pieces of Martha’s Vineyard lore: you take your recycling to the transfer station, separate it as directed into containers for plastics, paper, cardboard, aluminum and so on, and then at the end of the day it all gets tossed in together and dumped.
Like glass, the myth recycles endlessly. But it is a myth.
The Vineyard Conservation Society executive director Brendan O’Neill has been named the 2008 recipient of the Nicholas A. Robinson Environmental Award for his placed-based environmental work on Martha’s Vineyard. The award recognizes significant public service contributions in the environmental field by a graduate of the environmental legal studies program at Pace University School of Law in New York.
Mr. O’Neill shares this year’s honor with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also a Pace graduate.
