Annual Report
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Being outside in nature is pure joy. As members of Mass Audubon, we hope you find your joy at our wildlife sanctuaries throughout the year—watching a Red-tailed Hawk soar overhead while walking the trails at Pleasant Valley in Lenox, hearing the sweet sounds of a White-throated Sparrow during a Wednesday Morning Bird Walk at Joppa Flats in Newburyport, or experiencing the benefits of the new All Persons Trail at Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary in Barnstable. Our 110 protected wildlife sanctuaries not only bring joy to people they also protect our world by absorbing carbon, protecting water and air, providing habitat for wildlife, and so much more.
As you read this Annual Report, you will see the exceptional progress we have made toward our ambitious Action Agenda. You will note the increased pace and scale of our work to protect nature for wildlife and people because the triple crisis of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and inequitable access to nature demand it. The 30x30 Catalyst Fund, a $75 million private fund created and launched last year, helped us quadruple the rate of our land conservation efforts, while inspiring others to think and act at a scale necessary to protect 30 percent of our land and waters by 2030. That goal is in sight.
Conserving land and opening new wildlife sanctuaries are critical steps to meeting our biodiversity and climate goals, but we also need to avoid losses to nature. Mass Audubon’ science-based clean energy and nature advocacy campaign led to the passage of state climate legislation this past fall. The new law creates incentives to develop solar on built up areas, while discouraging development on our most precious forests. What was extraordinary was how fast this moved from a research paper completed with Harvard Forest to a law that avoids forest loss.
Mass Audubon’s ecological restoration team, formed just three years ago, has already restored more than 1,400 acres of land, including wetlands, shorelines, streams, and cranberry bogs. They are now busy restoring an additional 5,000 acres of land to meet our goal of 7,500 acres by 2029.
While we take every step and action we can to protect the natural world, our commitment to ensuring people have access to it has never been stronger. We opened our first urban wildlife sanctuary in 25 years—Pawtucket Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lowell. This partnership-based sanctuary serves a community that ranks near the bottom of cities with access to parks and open spaces. We built four new All Persons Trails (APTs) and we are on track to reach our goal of opening 25 APTs by 2026. Last year, 20 percent of our camper families—2,000 campers in all—took advantage of our sliding scale scholarship program creating economic equity and access to our world class nature summer camps.
We are very proud of the work we have done this past year to protect the nature of Massachusetts, and we’re excited for the year ahead working to tackle the greatest conservation challenges of our time with hope, urgency, and action. Thank you for being a part of Mass Audubon. We couldn’t do this without you!
Beth Kressley Goldstein
Chair, Board of Directors
David J. O'Neill
President