In one of the largest and most ecologically significant public conservation deals in recent years, the state has acquired a 900-acre parcel in the southern Berkshires that contains pristine old-growth forest, including Eastern hemlock trees that predate the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth.
The $5.2 million purchase of Spectacle Pond Farm followed protracted negotiations with its owners, a family divided over whether the land should be developed or conserved. After one side of the family sold its interest in the property to a developer and the other side sold its interest to the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the state stepped in and cut a deal that will preserve it for future generations.
"It's a spectacular piece of property," said Ian Bowles, secretary of energy and environmental affairs, who announced the deal yesterday.
The 900 acres lie between the Otis State Forest to the north and the Clam River watershed to the south.
"Finding large blocks of unprotected future conservation land is increasingly difficult, and this is a really important parcel because it connects these properties to the south and north in an uninterrupted corridor of habitat," Bowles said.
Some of the hemlock trees on the property are among the oldest trees in Massachusetts, said Bob Wilber, director of land protection for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which played a critical role in securing the deal.
"They sprouted out of the ground about the time Shakespeare was writing," he said.
Though the land has been on the state's radar for years, the purchase is a welcome development for Governor Deval Patrick, who was criticized by environmentalists earlier this year for failing to follow through on a campaign promise to increase spending on parks maintenance by $10 million, although the Legislature ultimately came through with much of that money. Patrick also remains under pressure from environmental advocates to dramatically increase capital spending on land conservation.
The Spectacle Pond Farm deal ends a long quest by the state, which has been eyeing the land for at least a quarter- century, said Wilber.
The Rowley and Hawley families had owned Spectacle Pond Farm since at least the mid-19th century and had been working closely with the state and the Audubon Society several years ago on a conservation deal, when a developer expressed interest in acquiring it, he said.
The owners were seven children of two brothers who had run a small farm on the land until the 1980s, said one of the children, Thelma Kennedy, 62, of Otis.
Last December, the Massachusetts Audubon Society purchased a half- interest in the property from one side of the family, said Laura Johnson, the group's president. A month later, she said, the remaining owners, first cousins of the others, sold their half-interest to the developer. But the Audubon Society's quick action, Johnson said, "saved the property, because the developer couldn't get both halves."
In a deal that closed last Friday, the state negotiated an agreement to buy the entire parcel from the developer and the conservation group. It is the state's largest conservation land purchase in five years and the first purchase of old-growth forest in more than 20 years, Bowles said.
"We just didn't want to see it developed," said Kennedy, who recalls rowing in wooden rowboats on Lower Spectacle Pond as a girl. "It's too bad the family had to end up like this, but with seven people, it's hard to get along."
Wilber described the property as "a peaceful place . . . and a very wild place" with a varied landscape. One side of the pond, he said, is dominated by mature hardwoods, mostly oaks and maples, with a high canopy; the other is covered with pine trees.
The land is part of the New Marlborough Forest Block, an 82,000-acre, largely roadless forest that has been left mostly undisturbed over time, state environmental officials said; only 45 such "core forests" remain from Virginia to Maine.
Within that forest is a tract of old-growth forest, a significant piece of ecological history, said Robert T. Leverett, executive director and cofounder of the Eastern Native Tree Society and an expert on old growth forests.
"It's a little like discovering part of your history through your grandparents and great-grandparents in an attic in a trunk," he said. "These old forests connect us to the Massachusetts and the Northeast that existed before Europeans came over and changed the land beyond recognition."
The land also includes Lower Spectacle Pond, a 62-acre lake that is one of only two large lakes in the Berkshires with an undeveloped and unprotected shoreline. The other is Long Pond in Great Barrington, said Lisa Capone, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The property includes the ruins of a historic mill village that had sprouted up in the mid-19th century along the Clam River, Wilber said. And, state officials said, it is home to one of the longest undisturbed portions of the Knox Trail, which was used by General Henry Knox in the winter of 1776 to transport a cannon from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Massachusetts, to help break the British siege of Boston.
The property contains a network of trails and is open to the public for kayaking, canoeing, hiking, fishing, hunting, and cross-country skiing, Capone said.Boston Globe
