The article starts "Belmont apartment proposal gets boost: Opponents fret over project's size. By Christine McConville, Globe Staff
BELMONT -- A developer's controversial plan to build 300 apartments in the Belmont Uplands has been bolstered by the Massachusetts Development Finance Authority's decision to finance the development.

Once again, Christine McConville, in "Belmont apartment proposal gets boost", has written off the Belmont Uplands as worthy conservation land, but lends more credence to it as prime development area, a housing project that should not be built for environmental reasons. The Alewife Reservation has returned to a wild state from early farming period, yet was always a huge drainage basin for Waltham, Belmont, Arlington and Cambridge, and thus attracted wildlife for hibernation, habitat and reproduction. Nineteen mammal species have been professionally inventoried with a book written about their presence, and 90 species of birds have been identified, 40 species for nesting in migration. Mink, gray and red fox, deer and otter are present, as is the great horned owl, pileated woodpecker, 25 varying warblers. Both peregrin falcon and American eagle utilize the area for prey as well as kestrels and red-tailed hawks.

Mr O'Neill owned all 26 acres of the private property abutting the river, and was able to gain unusually high benefits from his transaction, while holding on to the Uplands for future plans. The Uplands as a thickly wooded core of the Reservation, are a great benefit to the wetlands because many species require both habitats, such as the American woodcock and the wood duck. Some require large tree cavities for nesting while utilizing the pond and river. Because this is the only forest in the metropolitan vicinity of this silver maple monotype, and a small northern floodplain forest, according to Endangered Species and Natural Heritage Dept., it should not be clearcut as would be required by the developers. Many of the trees are over 100 years old, and as far as we can tell, the large "wolf tree" in the center of the forest, measured by a clinometer according to the National Register of Big Trees of almost 20 feet circumference and 119 feet tall, whose seedlings remained dominant in the protected isolation of the area, is the second or third largest in Massachusetts, the largest silver maple being in Dracut.

For many environmental reasons the Friends have worked to bring attention and recognition to the value of the area, which is presently being improved upon by the city of Cambridge, a Bulfinch and community marsh restoration initiative adjacent to the O'Neill forest which will require some of the former Little River Stream water flow through O'Neill property into the newly developed marsh. State, federal and volunteer agencies are working on this plan which may drastically improve flooding as there are 10 acres of flood retention area in the Bulfinch western marsh. Flooding has been a major issue in the opposition to development of the Uplands. At a time of global warming we should not cut down however small, a floodplain forest, in a most densely populated area of Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington outside metropolitan Boston.

Ellen Mass
President
Friends of Alewife Reservation