By Dr. Jen Karberg, Research Program Supervisor This November, Nantucket Conservation Foundation, in collaboration with the Town of Nantucket Natural Resource Department, completed the final step in a 2 year long restoration project to create a new oyster reef in Polpis Harbor. The first reef of it’s kind in Massachusetts, this project will show one…
Autumn Lore by Kathleen Jenks As autumn returns to earth’s northern hemisphere, and day and night are briefly, but perfectly, balanced at the equinox, may we remember anew how fragile life is — human life, surely, but also the lives of all other creatures, trees and plants, waters and winds. May we make wise choices…
Nantucket Conservation Foundation has begun a new and exciting project. We have created and opened our own bird banding station! There are many bird banding stations all over the world, including the two MAPS bird banding Stations, (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship), on Nantucket and Tuckernuck. The MAPS bird banding stations focus on the breeding…
Last November I reported on the beginning stages of a big “Landscaping Makeover” at the NCF office at 118 Cliff Road. This long-awaited renovation allowed us to incorporate areas with more formal plantings hosting a variety of native shrubs and grasses around the entrance to our office, designed by NCF board member, Dave Champoux. Nursery…
Although the calendar says that we still have a few days of summer left, fall is definitely in the air. The days are shorter, the nights are cooler, the humidity is lower, there is a touch of fall color in the foliage and the stores are full of apples, pumpkins and other fall produce. It’s…
In 2013, NCF’s Science and Stewardship Department started down the road of a wetland restoration project in Madequecham Valley that at the time seemed incredibly daunting. We idealistically set out to eradicate a 0.6 acre patch of an incredibly invasive plant, Phragmites australis, the common reed. Phragmites australis is a large, perennial grass, that has…
By Dr. Jen Karberg, Research Program Supervisor This summer saw the release of the the first section of the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) sixth comprehensive assessment. The assessment is a review of the work of thousands of scientists working on climate change and the goal of the assessment is to provide the most…
From the 2021 preliminary data for Nantucket which includes Tuckernuck and Muskeget Islands, there was a total of 73 breeding pairs of Piping Plovers. In 2020, we counted a total of 61 breeding pairs, an increase of 12 pairs. Eel Point still remains one of the hot spots for nesting Piping Plovers with 11 nesting…
The Nantucket Conservation Foundation will be hosting its 57th Annual Meeting of Membership on Thursday, August 5th at 5 pm at the Nantucket Hotel on Easton Street. We are pleased to announce that Samantha Hoff, PhD Student at University of Albany, will be our featured keynote speaker this year. Sam is a graduate student Ecology…
It’s mid-July on Nantucket, and a number of harmful algae blooms (or HABs) have already been documented within the island’s freshwater ponds. In past years, this phenomenon has occurred later in the summer. However, the unusually warm spring weather seems to have created earlier-than-usual conditions that favor the excess growth of Cyanobacteria, a particular type…