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Photo credit: Spencer Kennard, capecodphotos.com | |
Three Cheers to Forty Years!
Thank you for 40 years of protecting Pleasant Bay!
Forty years ago this year, fourteen area residents met at Orleans' Snow Library to discuss what they could do to preserve and protect Pleasant Bay. This small band of citizens and their love of the Bay were the driving forces behind the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' designation of Pleasant Bay as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC).
The ACEC designation enabled the creation of a dedicated resource management plan, facilitated the formation of the Pleasant Bay Alliance, and provided a framework for coordinated conservation efforts across the towns surrounding the bay, ultimately leading to focused regulations protecting the area's sensitive natural resources including diverse wildlife habitats and water quality, while maintaining public access for recreation activities like boating and fishing.
With little more than passion, determination, and foresight, this small band of concerned citizens became the Friends of Pleasant Bay — a respected nonprofit with a membership approaching 1500, and which proudly stands by its 40 years of partnerships and projects focused on protecting and preserving the Pleasant Bay estuary.
For your past and current support, we thank you. And we look forward to celebrating this significant anniversary with you in coming months.
—Allison Coleman, President, Board of Directors, Friends of Pleasant Bay
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FoPB's announces first grant recipient of 2025: Harwich Conservation Trust to acquire land in Pleasant Bay Watershed
FoPB is pleased to announce its first grant of 2025: a $25,000 grant to the Harwich Conservation Trust (HCT) to support its 6.3 acre Pleasant Bay Watershed Land Preservation Project. This effort advances HCT's four-year effort to acquire two upland properties in the Pleasant Bay Watershed from two different landowners and represents another bold step towards protecting the health of Pleasant Bay for everyone.
This effort entails fundraising to acquire a 2-acre forested property and an additional 4.3 acre forested property in East Harwich. These woodlands harbor lady slipper orchids and a range of wildlife dependent on the adjacent 50-acre HCT Pleasant Bay Woodlands to the north and town conservation land to the south as well as the interconnecting 6.3 forested acres. Preserving the total of 6.3 acres will create the missing link in this vital north-south wildlife habitat corridor as well as extinguish six septic systems from polluting Pleasant Bay. Read more here.
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To learn more about or support this important conservation effort, please contact Michael Lach, Executive Director, Harwich Conservation Trust at HCT@cape.com or 508-432-3997.
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Are you an avid and skilled photographer? Would you like to use your skills to drive awareness, educate, and inspire action for protection of Pleasant Bay? If so, FoPB would love to have you join efforts to visually showcase our beloved Bay.
The Bay is a rich and stunning subject for photography. From its vast majesty to microscopic universes, the Bay is teeming with opportunity to tell great stories.
Our goal is to assemble and curate a collection of photographic images — of coastal scientists, eelgrass, sailors and fishers, sailing regattas, bird- and aquatic life, shoreline change, sunsets, and everything in between — to help FoPB tell stories that matter. Interested? Let us know!
Contact us at info@friendsofpleasantbay.org.
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FoPB has accomplished so much in its 40 years — in policy, science, education, research, land conservation, and recreational access to Pleasant Bay — and done so as an all-volunteer organization!
Now, we need your help archiving our work, publications, studies, and other accomplishments!
FoPB seeks volunteers to help develop and implement procedures for acquiring, processing, digitizing and preserving archival material -- an effort particularly important during this, our 40th Anniversary Year.
Are you a history buff? Do you like research? Thrive on organization? Would you like to help gather key materials, documents, photographs, and records to preserve a record of our work? If so, let's talk!
Contact us at info@friendsofpleasantbay.org.
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Feature
Water quality report: 90% of Cape Cod's tested coastal embayments are 'unacceptable.'
By Heather McCarron, Cape Cod Times, December 21, 2024
Cape Cod's water quality remains a top environmental problem, with significant worries about the health of coastal embayments and freshwater ponds. At the same time, the region's public drinking water supplies continue to perform well.
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"While the broader ecosystem of Pleasant Bay thrives in many ways, owing in large part to its early ACEC designation, challenges remain. Excess nutrients from septic waste, lawn fertilizer runoff, and stormwater runoff all impact and degrade the bay, especially the headwater areas further from Bay openings. Continued investment in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and changes to homeowner lawn care practices are needed for Pleasant Bay to thrive in the future."
— Andrew Gottlieb, Executive Director, Association to Preserve Cape Cod
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Those are the findings of the newly released 2024 State of the Waters: Cape Cod report issued by the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization based in Dennis. This is the organization's sixth year of evaluating the quality of the Cape’s coastal and inland water bodies, as well as its public drinking water supplies. Read more.
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Brrrr! It's cold, but you can warm up by getting out and about Pleasant Bay!
Looking for walks, talks, birding, and other programs around Pleasant Bay and elsewhere on the Cape? Check out opportunities at a glance with FoPB's new regional Conservation Calendar, developed in partnership with the Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts and other nonprofit members. Click here and enjoy!
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The Nauset People, members of the larger Wampanoag Nation, were the first to discover Pleasant Bay some 12,000 years ago. They called it Monomoyik, meaning "Great Bay."
The Bay was a core of Native American settlement, with documented occupations dating back at least 9,000 years. By 4,000 years ago, Pleasant Bay had become a central place within the ancestral Wampanoag homeland. It was likely home to semi-permanent villages from 3,000 years ago until the 1500s and 1600s, when the arrival of European explorers marked the end of these villages.
The Bay has been the Nauset People's beloved source of sustenance and connection for some 12,000 years. Evidence abounds that their history has been assimilated into our daily lives. Place and street names, such as Namequoit, Potanomicut, Wequassett, Cotchpinecote, and Pochet, are obvious examples surrounding the bay's shoreline. While their numbers have decreased from thousands to only a few, the People and their devotion to The Great Bay and its watershed remain undiminished. They are still here now, reclaiming their language, adding to their families, and showing, by the example they themselves were given, how to love a bay.
For more information on the indigenous history of the Pleasant Bay area, visit our work on Indigenous culture here,.or here for additional reading resources.
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Friends of Pleasant Bay
P.O. Box 1243
Harwich, MA 02645
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