Activism Works!
This is a selection of press texts and video links that best illustrate the six-month fight to save the Notch Forest. Our actions to protect our regional forests are ongoing!
Amid public backlash, North Adams pulls out of a controversial forest management plan at Notch Reservoir
- By Sten Spinella, The Berkshire Eagle
- Dec 20, 2024
NORTH ADAMS — A controversial forest management plan around the Notch Reservoir has been scrapped.
In a statement issued Thursday night, Mayor Jennifer Macksey said the city has halted the project, which included logging within the Notch Reservoir watershed, due to relentless public backlash.
“The plan was laid out by our knowledgeable and dedicated partners to address key threats to this property and would have helped the city proactively manage our watershed's forest," the mayor said, indicating the move was made reluctantly. "However, given the public outcry regarding the impact the project could have on the Bellows Pipe Trail, I have decided not to move forward with the plan."
The city had been working on the project with the Woodlands Partnership, which secured grant money to develop a forest stewardship plan, and Mass Audubon, which conducted a climate resiliency and operations plan for the 1,073-acre property.
The plan was meant to address an increase in pests, disease and extreme rainfall. It called for the removal of dying and dead trees, including the ash and a red spruce plantation, then planting more climate-resistant species like sugar maple and oak. While logging would have been a source of revenue for the city, officials said it was not the reason it pursued the project.
Macksey acknowledged concerns about carbon sequestration, protecting the water supply and “aesthetics” she heard while interacting with the public. The Bellows Pipe Trail is on North Adams watershed land; Notch and Mount Williams reservoirs together provide the city’s water.
But she further defended the city’s exploration of the initiative.
"While the folks I met with had differing perspectives on the topic of climate-smart forestry, they still saw the merits of this project and did not feel the project would be detrimental to the City's water supply," she said in the statement. "In fact, they said that best practices were used throughout the plan, while acknowledging that there were ecological and social tradeoffs."
The statement, which also included comments from Mass Audubon Chief Conservation Officer Jocelyn Forbush, points out that climate-smart forestry, or removing dead and dying trees more likely to be impacted by climate change from forests, is a complex topic.
“We stand by the proven best practices used by reputable organizations doing this vital work,” Forbush said. “We’re heartened to see so many members of the public passionate about the environment and the crucial role forests play in our lives, which dovetails with our 128-year history of protecting the nature of Massachusetts.”
More than 2,000 people signed a petition, put together by Friends of Notch Reservoir and the Bellows Pipe Trailhead, an informal group of locals opposed to any logging, to stop the plan. They protested outside City Hall, and held public meetings, and vigorously criticized an operations plan that called for tree cutting on either side of the Bellows Pipe Trail. Earlier this year, the group was influential in getting herbicide ditched from the plan.
Friends co-founder Lori Bradley thanked the city and its partners in a statement to The Eagle “for listening to the concerns of our citizens over the last six months and paying heed to their heartfelt activism.”
Friends member Devin Raber said, “The owls and chipmunks won’t be waking up to chainsaws.”
At the heart of the disagreement between groups like the friends and the Woodlands Partnership was a scientific dispute on the most effective way to combat carbon sequestration: Is it better for the forest and reservoir to cut unhealthy trees now and plant healthy ones in their place, or to let nature take its course?
North Adams resident Valerie Shields, an active member of the friends group, wrote to City Council President Bryan Sapienza on Thursday to seek clarification on the mayor’s plans for Notch — Macksey had said of late that she was pausing any action until the city learned more. Shields’ view that this project was “a pending unnecessary decade-long watershed timber-harvesting plan for The Notch written by industrial-logging and tree-farming interest groups” is indicative of the perspective of her fellow critics.
“Operations on Notch Reservoir’s landslide-and-runoff-prone steep hills — with unprecedented heavyweight vehicles/equipment that rely on and emit toxins and with unmonitored tree-cutting choices/locations at the discretion of profit-driven loggers — may illogically start before and at the site of our City’s necessary dam-safety-plan repair and improvements at the reservoirs,” she wrote.
Friends co-founder Doone MacKay outlined what she thinks were several mistakes proponents of the plan made.
“The plan pretends that managing for carbon sequestration is a goal, and says that all trees more than 25 [inch] diameter are to be left standing,” MacKay said in a statement to The Eagle. “But on the ground, easily a dozen healthy trees of approximately that sizer or larger are marked for cutting. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?”
Dicken Crane, chair of the Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts, said the group understands why the city is not going forward given a lack of public support, but added that the group is “encouraging all our member municipalities to embrace proactive planning for forest stewardship and the ecological health of our communities.”
The city anticipates producing a “climate-informed open space and recreation plan,” which involves gathering public input to examine open space and forest stewardship opportunities locally.
Berkshires landscape architect Walter Cudnohufsky called the now-canceled project “more of an experiment.”
“A true forestry plan that fits the forest and the city is the minimum we should ask for,” he said. “‘Forever Wild’ is what seems appropriate for this healthy, diverse, well-functioning forest. Carbon sequestering is just hitting its stride.”
Glen Ayers, a retired public water supply operator, said, the forest is a "perfect example of land that should be protected so that it will continue to provide safe and clean drinking water to North Adams and adjacent communities.”
The letter concludes by saying the city will have to find another way to address safety issues at Notch, including wildfire risk, falling trees, invasive species and drainage.
"People's attachment to this particular section of the forest made for some passionate advocacy,” Macksey said. “I hope they will stay involved and answer the call for their input when asked in the future.”
The Rural We: Saving the Notch
Jan 23, 2025 | By: Francesca Olsen
In the summer of 2024, When Lori Bradley found out about a North Adams/Mass Audubon land management plan that would log around 70 acres next to the Notch Road Reservoir (known locally as The Notch) and use herbicides near the city’s watershed, she started a Facebook group in opposition to the plan.
The targeted site, off Notch Road on the wooded west end of North Adams leading to Mount Greylock, is the home of the Bellows Pipe Trail. Neighbors were concerned about the potential removal of old-growth trees and the impact logging could have on the water supply, so activity on the Facebook group soon picked up steam.
Opposition to the plan swelled, with 2,000 petition signatures, multiple City Hall protests, packed council meetings, and offers of help from other activists in the region like Nobel laureate Bill Moomaw and soil scientist Glen Ayers. Due to the coordinated community pressure, the city dropped the plan in December. Bradley, a painter and digital design professor at Bridgewater State College who lives in North Adams, talks about how this movement came together and how other communities can look to its success as a model for organizing during similar events.
“At the end of July 2024 there was an article about ‘climate-smart logging’ at the Notch. They called it a ‘thinning,’ which is basically taking out the canopy all along the Bellows Pipe Trail, almost a half mile back, and then up the slope toward the graveyard that's up there.When we looked at their plans, they were only cutting certain trees, but they had to cut dozens of logging roads in to get there. That whole hill is full of underground streams and rocky sheets. With that kind of traffic, the whole thing (could) slide down toward the reservoir. They kept complaining about the dying spruce plantation, which was planted in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps to protect against erosion. And they wanted, at the beginning, to use herbicides. That was the thing that got me riled. So a few of us went to the Conservation Commission meeting and they were against it as well. A couple of the members were pretty alarmed about these potential herbicides.
I found Chris Matera at MAForestWatch. He connected me with Janet Sinclair in Greenfield, who works with him and a lot of activists in that area. She asked me if there's any way she could help. That started the whole battle. The community came together, and that was the important thing.
We did a forest walk, and about 20 people came out. They had already marked a lot of trees that were old growth—oaks, healthy trees. The city and Mass Audubon said they were just logging for the unhealthy trees, but it was mostly healthy trees that were marked. Then it just started accelerating. We started an email list and started trying to get more members, posting constantly on Facebook. We were getting a lot of advice from people that had been through this before along the Mohawk Trail in the Pioneer Valley. It was nice to see all those people coming together and wanting to help.
We joined another group called Trees as a Public Good, and they put out an alert about it for people to write letters to organizations or state representatives. That went to the mayor, and it went to our state representatives and State Senator. They did another alert targeting Mass Audubon, and those resulted in probably 4,000 letters going out. We had the backing of some good policy people and experts. So that was really helpful.
We didn’t know where the mayor stood because she was completely noncommunicative. The only communication we had with her was through either City Council meetings or Conservation Commission meetings.
When we found out they canceled the project it was a total celebration. We were all calling and emailing back and forth; it was the best day.
We’ve been walking the property now, to document the trees that are up there, in case this comes up again. We’re getting involved in other state efforts, trying to help other people that are going through this. I go to all the Trees as a Public Good meetings. We're trying to stop logging on public lands, because they're our best offset for climate change right now. We're reorganizing as a group, and we’re trying to find a way to get permanent protection for the Notch.”
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Action Network - Call to Action - 2024
Mass Audubon, Do The Right Thing!
Despite their long history of good work supporting biodiversity and habitat and forest protection, Mass Audubon isn’t always a forest’s best friend.
Currently, Mass Audubon is using arguably deceptive “climate-smart” jargon to advocate its plan to cut 77 acres of mixed growth forest surrounding the Notch Forest Reservoir in North Adams. They are also proposing to develop a so-called demonstration forest, including logging every year for 10 years, in the rest of this 1088-acre town forest.
Is Mass Audubon planning to log on an even larger scale in Massachusetts? Audubon recently received a USDA $25 million grant to “…protect 10,000 acres of forests and wetlands in the Connecticut River Watershed….” Given Mass Audubon's actions in North Adams, we have to ask whether Mass Audubon will use this grant to destroy forests on an even larger scale.
Send a letter here to tell Mass Audubon leadership that you want them to stop the logging and stop the deceptive marketing to local officials, and that you demand transparency about the $25 million taxpayer-funded grant!