Habitat – Belmont Citizens Forum

Belmont Rower Looks Out for the Charles River

Climate Change, Environment, March/April 2024 Comments Off

Mar 012024

Belmont Rower Looks Out for the Charles River

By Zeus Smith As a US National Team rower, Belmont resident Maggie Fellows spends a lot of time on the Charles River. Since 2021, the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA) has mobilized a cohort of passionate community leaders like Fellows to push for climate-smart policies and practices right in their backyards. Called River Advocates, this program brings together volunteers from various backgrounds and experiences to learn effective advocacy strategies and steward a more climate-resilient future. The River Advocates program is a crash course in civic engagement––by joining, volunteers find a community of like-minded individuals interested in learning about direct actions [READ MORE]

Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

May/June 2023, Newsletter Comments Off

Apr 262023

Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

By Radha Iyengar The Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day on Saturday, April 22, an overcast and cool day. Volunteers included Girl Scouts Troop 82027, employees of Cityside Subaru, M&T Bank,and the Sai Group, and residents of Belmont and the surrounding communities. Many hands made light work. At the Pine Allee, efficient volunteers planted forty white pine saplings. The new plants replaced the Allee’s missing trees and some of the dead saplings from previous volunteer day plantings. At the adjacent meadow the volunteers planted slender [READ MORE]

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

Environment, November 2022, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Oct 312022

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

By Joseph Hibbard and Jeffrey North The Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter has been printing articles about the perils and poisons of non-native invasive plant species on these pages for years. Readers have learned that garlic mustard changes the chemistry of the soil to gain an advantage over other plant species in forest and edge areas. Our article on black swallowwort described that plant’s deadly toxicity to Monarch butterfly larvae that mistakenly consume it instead of nourishing native milkweed. We have described how Asiatic bittersweet rapidly climbs native trees, blocks the sunlight, and eventually topples the tree while changing our viewsheds. [READ MORE]

New Director Discusses Habitat’s Future

Climate Change, Environment, May/June 2022, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

May 052022

By Jeffrey North This interview has been edited for length and clarity. BCF Congratulations on your December appointment to the role of regional director for Metro West. We understand you will have oversight of the Habitat Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Belmont, as well as the wildlife sanctuaries Broadmoor in Natick, Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, and Waseeka in Hopkinton. You’ve been in nonprofit management and some notable education roles. Your background includes teaching, starting a 6–12 grade school, leading a graduate school, strategy and organization design consulting with nonprofit organizations, and studying communities’ shared sense of direction. Can you [READ MORE]

What is the Future of the Royal Road Woods?

Environment, March/April 2022, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Mar 032022

What is the Future of the Royal Road Woods?

By Vincent Stanton, Jr. Skip to Bonus Material In 1844, when the Fitchburg Line was built, the Clark family owned a triangular lot bounded by the new train line, Common Street, and Clark Street. Wellington Brook ran along the north side of the triangle, just south of the Fitchburg Line. Royal Road and Dunbarton Street did not exist. After more than a century of Clark descendents the land was sold in 1931 to the Glendower Trust, a vehicle of real estate developers John Hubbard and Donald Kenyon. Hubbard and Kenyon laid out plans for Dunbarton Street and Glendower Road (shortly [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Shows Strong Start

Environment, January 2022, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 042022

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Shows Strong Start

By Jeffrey North Late last year, field technicians engaged by the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multiyear campaign to restore select parcels of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. These stewardship projects focused first on invasive plant removal at Area A1. Restoration specialists from Parterre Ecological Services hand-cut the bittersweet vines that were smothering the trees there and deployed a forestry mower to obliterate (if only temporarily) the buckthorn and multiflora rose. The forestry mowing radically altered the appearance of that portion of the property, prompting the few visitors to ask if [READ MORE]

Fifty Million Gallons of Sewage Released

Climate Change, Environment, January 2022, Newsletter, Sewers, Stormwater, Water Quality Comments Off

Jan 032022

Fifty Million Gallons of Sewage Released

Discharges to Alewife Brook Have Persisted for Two Decades By Kristin Anderson and David White Fifty million gallons of sewage-contaminated stormwater have been discharged into the Alewife Brook from the cities of Cambridge and Somerville in 2021, according to websites for those two cities and the Metropolitan Water Resources Authority (MWRA) for the Alewife/Upper Mystic Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO). There has been as much sewage-contaminated water discharged into the Alewife Brook in 2021 as there was in 1997 before the implementation of a $200 million plan to modernize the area’s antique combined sewer systems. Pollution persists in the Alewife sub-watershed [READ MORE]

Urban Trees Improve Everyones’ Lives

Environment, Newsletter, November-December 2021, Plants Comments Off

Nov 022021

By David Meshoulam When I first tell people that I work in the field of “urban forestry” they look at me funny. “Urban areas have forests?” they ask. “I thought forests were out in the country.” But urban forestry is a real thing. Over the past several years, its importance has become increasingly recognized as a critical component of a city’s infrastructure, and rightfully so! Trees create more livable and healthy communities by cleaning and cooling our air, mitigating against flooding, and improving the mental and physical health of residents. In an era of climate change, with hotter summers leading [READ MORE]

CRWA Works to Keep the Charles River Clean

Environment, Newsletter, November-December 2021, Stormwater, Water Quality Comments Off

Nov 012021

CRWA Works to Keep the Charles River Clean

By Julia Hopkins and Lisa Kumpf Have you ever thought about what happens to that rain when extreme storms hit? If you call Belmont home, it ends up in the Charles or the Mystic River. The town of Belmont is sandwiched between the Charles and Mystic Rivers, two beautiful, fragile natural resources that provide habitat for wildlife and enjoyment for humans. The town is split between the Charles River watershed and the Mystic River watershed. A watershed is a land area that channels all rain and snowmelt into ponds, brooks, and streams that drain into a single river, and eventually [READ MORE]

Events July-August 2021

BCF Events, July-August 2021, Newsletter, Plants Comments Off

Jun 252021

Though days are now long and warm, event listings for local organizations harken back to the dreary depths of winter. Few groups are planning meetings this summer, the season of bittersweet freedom, of sunny days so many people did not live to see. Voltaire wrote in Candide, “We must tend our garden,” but he didn’t specify how, or who should benefit from said garden. If you’d like to help support your local web of life, consider enrolling in a class with the Native Plant Trust: “Native Species, Cultivars, and Selections: What’s the Difference?” held on Friday, July 16, from 1-3 [READ MORE]

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