Franklin Conservation Agent Celebrates Tree Farm on Town Land

It was a busy day yesterday....Conservation Agent Breeka Li Goodlander shared the following post on LinkedIn:

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Another day spent at Riverbend Conservation Area - the newest Certified Tree Farm (#2245)!

I’m riding high on the dopamine from this certification. Since April of this year, William Ashton and I have been hard at work pulling invasives, promoting riparian and forest health, building habitat brush piles, and creating native climate plots. This Certification proves that we are excelling in forest stewardship with this work.

Having placed a Forest Stewardship Plan on Riverbend back in 2024, it’s been the utmost fun following our prescribed roadmap and creating the plots to monitor and discover how climate change impacts our forests and riparian areas. We were able to get another two plots in today, with more planned late November. Data to come later.

This project would not be possible without the support from the Town of Franklin Conservation Commission, Department of Environmental Affairs, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation - Service Forestry, and the Massachusetts Climate Stewardship Incentive Program.

While this is a publicly accessible open space area, we ask that visitors stay on the designated trails and refrain from investigating our climate plots.

Tangentially, I am quite appreciative of this project for breaking down disciplinary silos. It’s not often that Foresters work with Wetland Scientists or vice versa, and I have learned so much about Forestry this past year that I never would have otherwise. I’ve learned that I have a lot to learn!

There’s nothing quite like the water and woods to bring people together.

Below, an aerial view of Riverbend Conservation area, Lincoln Street is to the right of the delineated area.