BOSTON — Members of the Greenfield-based Save Massachusetts Forests and the Concord-based Restore: The North Woods delivered a petition with more than 4,900 signatures to Gov. Charlie Baker’s office on Wednesday seeking a moratorium on logging and other methods of forest clearing on state land through the passage of two proposed bills.
Janet Sinclair, a Shelburne Falls resident and co-founder of Save Massachusetts Forests, explained that citizens’ concerns about logging and forest clearing on state land led to a temporary moratorium on those activities in 2010.
“That moratorium resulted in some changes, including expanding protected ‘reserve’ areas, but many recommendations were not implemented,” she said in a statement. “The concerns raised then are even more urgent now.”
The first House bill the petition supports, “An Act Relative to Forest Protection” or H.912, would give full protection to state forest and watershed lands under the management of the Department of Conservation and Recreation. The other bill they hope to pass, “An Act Relative to Increased Protection of Wildlife Management Areas” or H.1002, would protect 30% of wildlife management areas under the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
The petition states, “If passed, two bills — H.912, sponsored by Rep. Michael Finn and H.1002, sponsored by Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa — would make the state a leader by permanently protecting more than 460,000 acres of state-owned lands as parks and reserves, where natural processes are allowed to proceed with minimal human management, similar to the stewardship of our national parks.”
“(The Division of Fisheries and Wildlife) has done a wonderful job creating reserves, and the purpose of the bill was to protect them in statute and expand them,” Sabadosa said in a statement. “I’m excited that there is such interest in having a conversation about how we best manage our precious natural resources.”
Most of the work for this petition was done in 2018 and 2019, with Restore: The North Woods and Save Massachusetts Forests collecting signatures from across the state. Their work was halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, because they were unable to go door-to-door.
“A lot of our state land is in western Massachusetts,” Sinclair noted, “but we found while collecting signatures that just as many urban people care about this issue as rural people.”
The two bills, if passed, would not impose a complete moratorium on logging; they would only stop logging on state-owned land.
“State-owned forests are owned by everyone,” Sinclair said. “We should have a say about what happens on our lands.”
Organizers Sinclair and Michael Kellett of Restore: The North Woods brought their work from before the pandemic to present to Baker this week because the State House recently reopened to the public.
Attached to the petitions are 46 signatures from environmental organizations in Massachusetts. Many of the organizations are from western Massachusetts and Franklin County. The petition also includes a signature from biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, one of the world’s leading experts on ants, who died in December.
“I feel the public is on our side. It is just a question of when the legislators are going to get the message,” Sinclair said. “That is what we are doing here in Boston — we are trying to tell Charlie Baker that people care about this.”
Reach Bella Levavi at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com.