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Conservation Calendar
Guided Birding Tour
Wednesday, May 1, 7:00 to 9:00 pm, MVR High School.
Join Robert Culbert on a hunt for woodcocks and whippoorwhils. Carpool
starts from the high school parking lot. $30, $15 for ages 18 and under.
Girls in the Woods
Thursday, May 2, 3:30 to 6:00 pm, Sassafras in Aquinnah.
Outdoor program for girls age 8-14 is from bus pick-up until 6 p.m. at Sassafras Earth Education. For more information, email or call 508 645-2008; for directions, see website.
Horseshoe Crab Survey Training
Saturday, May 4, 9:00 to 11:00 am, Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary.
Train to become a volunteer to help Felix Neck monitor island horseshoe
crab populations. Returning volunteers welcome. Dress for the weather.
Please wear shoes that can get wet. For further information and
registration, please call Felix Neck at 508 627-4850.
Mytoi Spring Planting and Garden Clean-up
Saturday, May 4, 9:00 am to noon,
Mytoi Garden, Chappaquiddick
A great way to celebrate Spring! Spend a spring morning with The
Trustees of Reservations caring for the Island’s only public
Japanese-style garden. Bring your own work gloves, rakes, and shovels.
For more info, call 508 693-7662.
Heavy Nettle Fest
Sunday, May 5, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm,
at Felix Neck.
Join Slow Food MV and Felix Neck for a day of celebrating nettles and
other wild foods. Learn how to identify spring wild foods and how to
create your own nettle patch. Featuring a talk by herbalist Holly
Bellebuono, cooking demos by local chefs, a wild food potluck, and
prizes for the "wild food challenge." Weather Permitting. For schedule,
additional information or tickets to attend the cooking demos, visit Slow Food.
Land Bank Walk
Sunday, May 5, 1:00 pm, West Tisbury.
Land Bank staff lead a guided walk at Blackwater Pond Reservation
off Lambert's Cove Rd. in West Tisbury. The walk will last
approximately 1-2 hours. Rain or shine, so dress for the weather. For
more information call the land bank office at 508 627-7141.
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Monday, April 29, 2013
Local News
The Clean-Up Wrap-Up, Earth Day 2013
It's a big job, but you have to start somewhere. Hazel (and George, background) Hearn at Owen Park Beach.
A hearty thank-you is in order to all who braved distinctly sub-optimal weather to participate in the 21st
annual VCS Earth Day Beach Clean-up. Over 200 volunteers helped clean
23 Vineyard beaches, providing a great environmental service, both local
and global. Our greatest Island resource got a much needed spring
cleaning through the removal of truckloads of garbage, much of which
would have inevitably returned to pollute the world’s oceans and
threaten marine life.
This year’s after-party was graciously hosted by the Harbor View Hotel
and featured their own great food along with donated treats from
Flatbread Co. and the Scottish Bakehouse. Thanks to them and our other
major sponsors, M.V. Savings Bank, Comcast, and WMVY (who broadcast live
from Eastville Beach).
For more photos, check out the slideshow
at our website. Thanks to Patti Leighton, Susan Safford, and Signe
Benjamin for contributing their photos. If you have any of your own that
you’d like to share, please send them along!
Peeking under the tarp, 2013 edition
Following the big day, the three most common questions we hear from
volunteers, supporters, and newspaper reporters alike are what sort of
things were most often found, how much total was collected, and then
some variation of “So what was the weirdest thing you found out there?”
We estimate about two tons in total was hauled away in what was nine or
ten dump truck loads. As always, the most abundant items were small bits
of plastic, beverage bottles and cans, and those infernal Mylar
balloons, complete with their festive and wildlife-strangling ribbons.
Common large items included car and boat parts, lobster traps, big
pieces of Styrofoam, and lots of rope. The oddities this year (though
they’re truly not that odd when viewed in the 21-year context of the
event) were several deck chairs, a road sign, and large chunks of the
wooden staircases that (used to) lead up to the top of the cliffs to the
west of Lucy Vincent Beach.
Perhaps the strangest thing this year was not any particular item, but
the huge disparity between the state of the beaches pre-cleanup.
Volunteers at Lambert’s Cove reported that the beach was pretty clean
when they got there, while just a couple miles away (as the gull flies,
at least) at Lobsterville, despondent cleaners felt they hadn’t even
make a dent in a terrible sprawl of garbage after two hours of hard
work. (We’re pretty sure they’re just being modest, given what they
hauled out – 20 full bags, and equally as much in loose rope and big
junk – but it is unsettling.)
VCS Raffle Winners
One Beach Clean-Up volunteer deserves congratulations as well as thanks:
as the winner of our Earth Day raffle, VCS member Julia Livingston of
Cambridge and Edgartown will be taking home a copy of Oceans, a beautiful book/DVD/Blu-ray set by Jacques Perrin. Julia helped clean up Menemsha beach.
Congratulations also to Mark Kaltenbacher, the winner of a basket of
environmental- and sustainability-themed books picked out by the VCS
Board of Directors. The book basket raffle was part of last winter’s new
membership campaign. But you don’t have to wait until next holiday
season to get a little something extra for joining VCS: right now any new members can choose to receive one of our two most popular books, Walking Trails of M.V. or Edible Wild Plants of M.V.
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