Massachusetts Audubon Society

Mass Audubon maintains 25 field offices and staffed wildlife sanctuaries (including 20 sanctuaries with nature centers, two of which are in urban areas) and an additional 41 unstaffed wildlife sanctuaries which are prepared for public visitation. Mass Audubon sanctuaries serve as the base for nature and environmental education courses and programs, scientific research, ecological management and other conservation-related activities. As of june 30, 2023, mass Audubon protected 41,524 acres of open space in Massachusetts, owning 33,594 acres in fee and protecting the remainder with conservation easements. These diverse protected habitats range from the berkshires to cape cod and the islands and help preserve the rich biodiversity of Massachusetts. Mass Audubon actively pursues both donations and purchases of additional conservation land and is the largest private conservation landowner in the state. An estimated 582,000 visitors came to enjoy mass Audubon properties in fy 2023.mass Audubon is also the largest non-governmental provider of nature education in the state. Mass Audubon develops educational materials and environmental policy materials for students, teachers, legislators, and the general public. In fy 2023, mass Audubon taught nature programs to more than 84,000 children and adults, enrolled more than 10,400 children in its summer day and residential nature camps, and conducted science/nature training for more than 1,200 teachers, despite the constraints of the pandemic. In addition, mass Audubon was fortunate to have more than 6,350 volunteers contribute more than 91,000 hours of service across the state in fy 2023

Mass Audubon utilizes and develops scientific knowledge to support its longstanding tradition as an organization which uses science as the underpinning for its education, land protection, advocacy and habitat stewardship activities. Current research and/or ecological management work focuses on the protection and stewardship of selected Massachusetts habitats such as grasslands, coastal heathlands and salt marshes. In addition, monitoring of key groups of organisms such as birds, amphibians, invertebrates and plants continues across the state in order to provide an important baseline to evaluate changing environmental conditions associated with climate change and land development. Mass Audubon has also developed and implements an invasive species management strategy to protect the integrity of its lands as well as to provide guidance for other landowners throughout the state.mass Audubon lands play a critical role in the delivery of its mission, and its land protection efforts focus on conserving ecologically significant tracts of land adjacent to existing wildlife sanctuaries, thereby protecting and enhancing their biological integrity and viability as program sites. Mass Audubon also advances the protection of selected high priority focus areas beyond its existing wildlife sanctuaries through collaboration with state and local public agencies and local and regional land trusts. Collectively, these protection priorities include a wide range of Massachusetts habitats.

In addition to the services provided by the wildlife sanctuaries and the education programming referred to in 4a above which are available to members and non-members alike, mass Audubon members also enjoy a newsletter (explore) produced four times per year, a quarterly e-newsletter (explorations), discounts on programs and at gift shops, and publications to increase public awareness of wildlife, nature, and environmental issues. For example, in fy 2020 mass Audubon completed work on the sixth edition of its definitive report on land use in Massachusetts entitled losing ground: nature's value in a changing climate. This report calculates and analyzes the causes associated with the loss of open space in Massachusetts and calls for a bold state-wide land conservation goal to preserve open space and combat climate change.in addition, the mass Audubon website (www.massaudubon.org) offers a wide variety of information on mass Audubon's sanctuaries, conservation efforts, land protection projects, advocacy issues, climate change work, and the natural world. Currently, mass Audubon has ten regional e-newsletters and five other e-newsletters on specific topics, as well as a number of blogs. Mass Audubon also operates a gift shop in lincoln which sells merchandise related to nature, wildlife observation and environmental education to both members and non-members as well as a number of smaller nature-themed gift shops at many of the sanctuaries.

Mass Audubon saw the enactment of two historic climate laws for which it advocated on both the federal and Massachusetts state levels: 1) after decades of near misses on major federal proposals to address climate change, the u.s. senate and house passed the inflation reduction act (ira), which included $370 billion for climate and clean energy measures and 2) at the state level, governor charles baker signed into law a sweeping package to advance the offshore wind industry in Massachusetts and implement a broad set of strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, buildings, natural gas infrastructure, and other significant sources.mass Audubon celebrated victory for its $1 billion for nature and climate campaign. This was a two-year effort to help secure one billion dollars of new public funding, including from the federal inflation reduction act and state economic development package, for nature and climate solutions in Massachusetts. Mass Audubon and its advocates and supporters have also begun scaling up work on two wildlife protection campaigns: 1) pushing for improved protections for horseshoe crabs, whose local populations are severely depleted from decades of overharvesting, and 2) for increased regulation of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, a type of rat poison that is killing wildlife, including bald eagles and other raptors.in addition, mass Audubon worked on a report to be released in september 2023 entitled "growing solar: protecting nature" which documents the amount of forest and agricultural land being lost to large, ground-mounted solar arrays in recent years. The report will propose alternative siting of these arrays in order to continue to advance the commonwealth's critical goal of increasing the amount of electricity produced by solar energy without sacrificing forests (an important source of carbon storage) or prime agricultural lands in the process.