[Street] interested in this action? Tour of a local forest threatened by development - Sunday at noon
rita sebastian
rita at brandeis.edu
Sat Jan 28 15:48:59 EST 2012
I am passing along this issue. Are you interested in supporting this
action? I will announce it at the GA if no one else from the group is
present. It is important to support habitat as well as housing!
forwarded from: [Climate-action] Fwd: [Occupy Somerville]
tour of the Silver Maple forest next to the Alewife Forest if anyone is
interested this Sunday at 12 pm. Meet at the bus dropoff/pick up at alewife
t-station.
The Silver Maple Forest, adjacent to and unofficially part of the
Alewife Reservation, is slated to be destroyed to make way for development.
Although the forest has important environmental benefits to the
surrounding communities, mainstream conservation groups have been unable
to stop plans to raze the trees.
Are there any environmental-concerned anti-authoritarians out there
willing to learn more about the issue in order to formulate strategies
and tactics to preserve the forest?
The Alewife Reservation is located right across the street from the
Alewife T station of the Red Line, making it highly accessible to urban
residents. Home to deer, coyote, foxes, and other wildlife, it's used
by various people in the community, including kids from the nearby
public housing development, and "homeless" people who make camp there.
There's no physical boundary between the publicly-owned reservation and
the privately-owned area known as the Silver Maple Forest or the Belmont
Uplands. As far as animals are concerned, it's one whole wilderness.
O'Neill Properties wants to make a profit by cutting down the Silver
Maple Forest on the land it owns in order to erect houses there, even
though its on a floodplain and is unsuitable for building.
Several groups have tried to work within in the system to save the
forest, trying to get court injunctions, EPA protection, petitioning the
state of Massachusetts and adjacent cities to buy the land, but private
property law and the profit motive have trumped all their efforts.
We need to preserve the commons and protect the environment by defending
this urban forest.
A private developer wants to put in a housing development w/ 300 units and
600 parking
spaces in the middle of this beautiful 120 acre reservation. The Belmont
Coalition and Friends of the Alewife Reservation have been fighting it
in the courts for years and another ruling is scheduled for this Spring
so they're reaching out to local environmental activists to help out.
More info is below - check out their web sites for a good synopsis of
what's gone down so far.
petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/save-cambridges-silver-maple-forest
They can contact Ben at
617-894-2115 <617-894-2115> or send an email to this
listserv or spoon987654321 at yahoo.com.
--
Rita Monestersky- Sebastian
Brandeis, MA SID' 2009
Martin Luther King wrote that *“In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party
represented a massive act of civil disobedience.”*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/private/street/attachments/20120128/2b1ab2d2/attachment.htm>
More information about the Street
mailing list