Our Strategy

The landscape we work to protect includes the forests, water-supply land, and recreational areas that comprise critical habitat for native Massachusetts species and also make the Commonwealth an exceptional place for people to live. While development pressure pushes down on the closing window of opportunity for land protection in Massachusetts, the need for an aggressive land protection strategy is amplified by climate change. The unfragmented landscapes our land protection strategy targets for protection are habitat where native plants and animals have the best chance to persevere in the face of climate change.

Mass Audubon’s statewide land protection strategy is specifically designed to respond to the increased urgency for land protection across the Commonwealth. This strategy is grounded in the most current, science-based information available and includes resource-based land protection plans for each of our sanctuaries. Our strategy identifies the need to focus our efforts on almost 30,000 acres of high-priority habitat in the vicinity of our established wildlife sanctuaries, as well as protecting new focus areas of statewide conservation significance.

What we need to do to conserve the natural heritage of the Commonwealth is simple but challenging: Mass Audubon must be proactive and focused in our land protection efforts to ensure that those lands that are most important to achieving our conservation vision are protected. Our land protection efforts focus on four primary themes statewide and at our sanctuaries:

1. Enhance connections and linkages between our sanctuary lands and other protected land for both wildlife habitat and trails
2. Protect critical water resources, especially river corridors, watersheds and wetland systems that serve as the arteries of our natural systems
3. Improve visitor access to our sanctuaries and enhance our educational programming—giving future generations the opportunity to experience and appreciate the natural world
4. Collaborate with partner organizations and agencies to protect areas of statewide ecological significance.

Mass Audubon focused land protection strategy includes detailed parcel level land protection plans that identify high-priority habitat in the vicinity of our established wildlife sanctuaries. These descriptive plans are the key to our targeted method of land protection. Our parcel level land protection plans contain a narrative which identifies significant local resources and threats, the sanctuary-specific land protection objectives, the parcels identified as priorities for protection and the key linkages and partnership opportunities. The plans also contain a map identifying targeted parcels for protection as “highest,” “secondary,” or “other” priority and a database of priority parcel owners.