Re: More news on NPCA and GSENM

["Linda B. Merims" <lbm@ici.net>]

connie B Berto wrote:

>    Do you remember a Ridecamp message a few weeks ago about how the
> Audubon Society in Massachusetts has closed all of its very extensive
> holdings in that state to equestrians?   This is land that had been
> donated by the Cabots, the Lodges, the Saltonstalls, and other
> equestrian families, to Audubon, and now, without public input, they
> kicked us out.   Rick told me of his personal efforts to get M.A.S. to
> meetings, etc., to no avail.   Latest word is that  a lawsuit is being
> considered against  the M.A.S. , the issue being condemnation, in order
> to get back the miles of public trails now closed  to riders.   Pretty
> sad to have it reduced to this impasse.

That's not quite the latest...

The center of this firestorm is 1000 feet of trail that connects one
part of the extensive Sherborn/Dover townships trail system to the rest
of it.  The 1000 feet is on the Audubon's Society's Broadmoor Sanctuary
property that was, indeed, donated to Audubon by a horseman.  As we all
know, the maddening thing about trails is that they are a *network*--
close just one little piece and suddenly miles of the network become
inaccessible.  (No packet switching for horses...sigh.)

Anyway, this is a dogfight that has been going on for almost a year
now.  The town of Sherborn is an extremely wealthy old-money (Cabot,
Lodge, Saltonstall) rural town about 20 miles west of Boston, which
still supports a local hunt, the Norfolk Hunt, which is the group that
had pretty much put this network of trails over private land together.
The best the Audubon Society would offer was to reroute the horses
off to the busy roadside frontage of their property, and allow the town
to build a trail there, by the roadside, at the town's expense.

The Selectmen of the town of Sherborn countered by placing on its annual
April town meeting warrant an article (law) that would have condemned an
easement on this trail.  I.e., if the majority present at the town meeting
voted for it, it would have taken for the town by eminent domain, with
monetary compensation to the Audubon Society, the *right* to cross
this section of trail as the town saw fit.  It looked to be a shoe-in.

Should it pass in April, the Audubon Society had vowed to fight
this taking of an easement to the Supreme Court, arguing private
property rights.

The latest is that the town Selectmen and the Audubon Society *may*
have reached an acceptable compromise in a closed-door meeting.  The
compromise involves keeping the existing trail pedestrian only
(citing ecological concerns for a nearby pond), but marking out
a new trail further away from the pond, but not all the way out to
the busy road.  It's not clear from the article I'm reading (Feb.
Yankee Pedlar, p. 12) who will pay for this new trail.

So, it looks like the rich people got their act together (which is
something rich people do very well; one suspects that that may be
part of the reason they're rich) and it looks like they'll keep their
trail connector.  But this doesn't say anything at all about the
status of the rest of the Audubon Society's property in Massachusetts,
nor anywhere else in the US.

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
Massachusetts, USA