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Silver Maple Forest update and events



Call: 617 415 1884 for more information

Friday, October 4, 1:00pm
Walter Kittredge Botanical Walk and work project
Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge

Saturday, October 12, 10:00am
Little River walk with Anne Marie Lambert
Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge

Tuesday, October 15, 2:00pm
Opening Ceremony, Stormwater Wetland- North Cambridge
with City, DCR, MWRA, Bioengineering, FAR and others.
Cul de Sac at Cambridge Park Drive

Saturday, October 19, 10:00am
DCR Interpreter Maggi Brown- guided tour of Alewife Reservation

Saturday, October 26, 10:00am
Cambridge Candidates Tour of Alewife Reservation
Walter Kittredge

Other important events:

October 10, 9:15 scheduled
Hearing on Verizon cell tower plan
10518 case
Central Sq. Senior Center near Alewife Reservation (Sancta Maria hospital).
Wildlife opponents are requested to speak.

Send note about your cell tower environmental concerns to Begabati Linnean if you can by this Wednesday (3rd). begabatil@verizon.net.

October 1, 7:45
Net Zero Hearing for future buildings in Cambridge
Model: MLKing School
Senior Center
CONTACT Mike Connolly · (617) 981-6235

October 7, 7pm
The Mystic River: A Natural and Human History
Book Signing by Rick Beinecke
Robbins Library, Arlington, MA.

October 24, 6pm
Julie Wormser- Speaks on Climate Change
Boston Harbor Association Ex. Dir.
Mystic River Watershed Assoc. Annual Meeting
Winchester town Hall


See Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) Petition Filing of Attorney for Coalition to Preserve Belmont Uplands.

Contact Coalition to Preserve Belmont Uplands leader, Idith Kisin for more information: idithh@gmail.com

A work project at Alewife is going now. We are doing some invasive removal against a small battalion of phrags which are creeping stealthily beyond their large encampment into the open meadow where so many new species have been found such as rapebroom (from the fungi family) and special asters, grasses and sedges. http://friendsofalewifereservation.org/2013_Archive/2013-08-28_Identified_Plant_list_grows_to_386_on_Alewife_Reservation.htm
Suffolk students and adult volunteers have been helping on Fridays. Garden work was well done for several hours on Saturday. We have yet to clear a part of the pathway for Anne Marie's walk coming up on the 12th and hope to have the youth out this Saturday.

Please volunteer any time if you are able. We will bring you the tools and train you very quickly, but there must be two to work together for safety sake.

FAR will have Dave Brown, animal tracker back for November and December.

And a Solstice Service for sure. Would you like to help arrange it? We will try to get the churches as we did for the last 6 years for an inter-denominational one, and hopefully acquire their support again near the 'celestial' (word for China) holiday. Time is of the essence.
Do I sound like a broken record? Believe it or not, my message is not. Each time silver maple voices are called for, they are more important than the previous time. Legal and grass roots battles increase tension antipathy and fear. The environmental stakes for preserving this rare floodplain forest are raised by officials and developers in passageways we cannot follow.

FAR is encouraging everyone to consider joining in on some of these activities to plan further actions to stave off removal of the silver maple forest. One valuable step to do yourself while reading this list is to call Dan at DCR and ask him to hold off any decision making with Brian O'Neill until the Superior Court is finished and the community has its 'say'. No easement given!!! And yes, support the Coalition to Preserve Belmont Uplands- a website you can access.

IF you read the Brief (when posted), you will note clear courtroom 'due process' failures as well as a refusal by John Adams Courthouse judges to consider the environmental factors of the silver maple forest and its "upper floodplain" area, an adaptation area the region of Arlington, Belmont, Cambridge and Somerville need most in the present climate change period with Alewife's enormous floodplain resilience. Thanks for the call to Dan: 617 626-1438. Millions of dollars get thrown around at this point in development games, so vigilance is all we community folks have. So let's show it.

Hope to see you at one or more of the events, and for volunteering at the phrag attacks on Fridays.
Call office to volunteer: 617 415-1884