Cleaning and Environmental Teaching at Alewife

Conservation lessons go beyond books

April was an important month for spring cleaning and celebrating lifeforms and natural resources at Alewife. Friends groups of Alewife Reservation, Jerry's Pond and Fresh Pond all celebrated the coming of spring with cleanups and youth activities, leaving most of the Alewife area devoid of familiar trash, with the exception of the Route 16 rotary area. At Alewife and Fresh Pond, volunteer surveyors captured interesting species with cell phones, and noted plants, birds, and a newly reported reptile, the Northern Brown snake, identified by Earthwatch Research Director, Stan Rullman. At Alewife Reservation, residents and families from surrounding towns Somerville, North Shore and Cambridge came for the annual state-wide cleanup. Earth Watch visitor Mike Mulqueen taught visitors to post their species findings on the website, iNaturalist.com, which pools and ID's nature photos among common species within specific local or world-wide locations, e.g. Alewife urban wild. As participants located biodiversity, they also cleaned 6 sections of the Reservation by recycling materials and gathering large amounts of trash as requested by MA Park Serve Day DCR directives and duplicated across the Commonwealth. At Alewife Reservation, 6 cubic yards were removed. Jerry's Pond volunteers, including many neighbors and residents of Fresh Pond Apartments, collected nearly 3 cubic yards. Also on board at Alewife were the New England Aquarium Live Blue Service Corps under supervision of Evan Henerberry.

"The cleanup", said President Ellen Mass, "comes at a most important time, when high levels of Cambridge development are impacting the rare city resources such as recent presence of a dead swan and weakened duck, and turbid smelly water at the storm water wetland, preventing waterfowl nesting. Alarming water quality changes and colors were also noted just below new construction on Route 2 at the city wetlands by passers-by. FAR requested testing for the area's discharge areas which flow to Little River. Afterwards, a clean bill of water quality was given by Haley and Aldrich international consultant firm. Many monitors and stewards are needed to protect the open space along the 'Alewife Corridor', as the Earthos Insititute Tufts Symposium highlighted recently."