Preserving Acton's Outdoors: One Committee at a Time

One-thousand six hundred-and-fifty acres of conservation land is a lot to manage. In the days of Wal-Mart and Starbucks, maintaining several places in town to hike in 'the wilderness' takes a lot of work that requires many volunteers to handle.

 In 1996, the Land Stewardship Committee (LSC) was created to assist the Acton Conservation Commission (CC) in the maintenance and preservation of the protected lands of Acton. The LSC is a volunteer-based group of individuals that are each responsible for helping to maintain a piece of conservation land that is administered by the CC.

During a LSC meeting Tuesday at the Town Hall, the stewards discussed whether or not benches should be placed in certain conservation areas, as well as how to go about creating a safety pamphlet for residents interested in volunteering to help maintain the land.

Almost everyone in the group agreed that certain areas in the preserved land would benefit from benches. But steward Bettina Abe was concerned was that if one bench is to be built into one area, it opens a Pandora's box for building a cluster of benches in the future.  Steward Nan Towle Millett thought having benches in certain areas would be a good idea because people tend to appreciate a place to rest when hiking.

"Using a trail that I know a bench is on makes all the difference to me," said Millett. "It is a good place for me to rest because it is not so easy to get up from sitting on the ground."

The group also discussed designing a safety pamphlet for volunteers interested in helping to maintain certain trails. Jim Snyder-Grant explained that the town is responsible for providing safety information to those who work or volunteer to maintain the land by the regulations of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA).

"Talking with the people on this committee and with the Town Council, the notion has come up of the high value of having some standard piece of paper that we can hand to volunteers that they sign and hand back to us," said Snyder-Grant. "The important thing it does is that it would be our chance to send a consistent message to everyone about the risks they face going out in the woods and how to deal with those risks."

The group brainstormed about what hazards may come about while traveling in the woods. Among the ideas brought up: tick awareness and how to manage an injury. The group plans to draft a safety pamphlet in the near future.

If you're interested in the Acton outdoors and would like to volunteer to help preserve the conservation lands or if you're interested to know more about the 1650 acres of conservation land, contact the LSC at lsc@acton-ma.gov.