Through this blog, we have explored the various and unique research and field work projects that NCF’s Science and Stewardship Department is involved in. It would be impossible for us to complete all of this work without the assistance of our wonderful Seasonal Field Crew. Each Field Season we hire 3-4 people to support our…
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Our 2013 field season is now in full swing and each year we hire a crew of seasonal field assistants to help us conduct all of the field work needed for our many and various research and management projects. This year we are so pleased to welcome a wonderful, dedicated, and fun crew of people…
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Spring on Nantucket means the arrival of peepers, daffodils blooming and American oystercatchers on the beach. It also means the arrival of one of our more interesting marine species – the horseshoe crab, which begins showing up on protected and sheltered beaches to mate and spawn in May and June. These prehistoric looking animals aren’t…
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March always sneaks up on me each year. In the Science and Stewardship Department at NCF, our work year is divided up into two very different parts: our Field Season (~April-October) when we are actively involved in collecting data and conducting our numerous research and monitoring projects, and the Off-Season(~November-March) which really isn’t an off-season…
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Last week, Jen Karberg (NCF’s Research Supervisor) attended the annual New England Plant Conservation Program (NEPCoP) MA Task Force Meeting to discuss rare plants and the state of rare plant populations and management in Massachusetts. NEPCoP is a collection of professional botanists, conservation organizations, universities and state agencies organized in order to document New England’s…
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The Foundation owns and manages a little under 9,000 acres of protected conservation land on the island. Nantucket is an interesting place to practice conservation because many of the unique natural areas on Nantucket exist because of human activities and disturbance. The rare sandplain grasslands and heathlands found on the south shores of Nantucket exist…
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There are a few local legends about how deer first came to live on Nantucket that range from deer swimming from the Cape (16 miles at the shortest point) to deer being purposefully brought to the island in the 1920s for hunting. Looking at archaeological evidence, deer have likely been present since Nantucket became an…
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Today, the NCF Science and Stewardship Department is venturing into exciting and unknown territory. We are participating in the #SciFund Challenge to raise money to study spotted turtles at Medouie Creek. If you look back over our posts from the last week, you’ll read all about spotted turtles and the large wetland restoration project we…
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The Medouie Creek Wetland is a large wetland along the north side of Polpis Harbor on Nantucket Island. This wetland was historically one large salt water marsh, directly connected to the harbor, getting daily tides washing over it. Sometime in the 1930s, a dike was created to build a road, allowing people access to the…
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The Nantucket Conservation Foundation is a non-profit group on Nantucket Island (30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod!). NCF was founded in 1963 and started out acquiring land and open space to protect it from development. We currently own over 9,000 acres of conservation lands on the island. The mission of the Foundation is…
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