Ever since cultivation began on the Vineyard, farmers have tried to enrich the nutrient-poor soils of the Island's sandplain grassland. Now scientists are beginning a five-year experiment on the Island trying to achieve the exact opposite.
At a cost of some $700,000, The Nature Conservancy and Marine Biological Laboratory will try various ways of de-enriching the soil on 70 acres of sandplain at Katama, with an eye toward reestablishing the grassland ecosystem which formerly existed there.
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.
An investigation by the Committee on Finance for the United States Senate has thrust The Nature Conservancy and its conservation buyer program under a spotlight, and along with it the record $64 million sale of the Herring Creek Farm in Edgartown.
Years of Talks Pay Off in 62-Acre Conservation Gift Along Middle Road
By JULIA WELLS
A wide swath of rolling farmland and wooded hillside that includes a high ridge perched above the scenic Middle Road in Chilmark and West Tisbury will remain forever wild, thanks to an unusual conservation gift from Virginia Crowell Jones and Everett Noteman Jones to The Nature Conservancy and the Vineyard Conservation Society, the Gazette has learned.
The Vineyard could see as many as 7,032 more homes on its 17,475
remaining acres of developable land, officials from the state Executive
Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) said at an Island forum held
Thursday night.
"That's a relatively short time frame to be faced with
some tough choices," said Christian Jacqz, director of
Massachusetts Geographic Information System, in a presentation to Island
officials at the Howes House in West Tisbury.
It began with a suburban-style subdivision plan, polished
like a shiny apple: Maximum density, 54 luxury homes, two beach clubs
with swimming pools.
It ended last week with a record real estate sale and a
subdivision plan of a markedly different color: Six new luxury homes
added to five existing homes and a vast sweep of farmland saved
forever.
But between the beginning and the end of the Herring Creek
Farm story there is another story.
