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Citation: National Park Service (US Department of
the Interior).
Walden Pond and Woods, Special Resource Study: Reconnaissance Survey
(Boston MA: DOI Boston Support Office for Planning and Legislation,
Sept. 2002) 56 pp.
In 1999, Congress authorized this NPS study to evaluate whether "Walden
Pond and Woods" are eligible to be included in the National Park
system, or alternative methods of protecting and interpreting these
lands. (Although the study did not pre-suppose a long-term management
role for the NPS, it was thought that the study might identify a
continued beneficial relationship.) The NPS answer was both yes and no.
Yes, in that the NPS finds Walden Pond and Woods to be nationally
significant as a place for re-creation and for study of ecological change,
as a landscape illustrating our national heritage, as a site of
documented natural history, and as the locus of Thoreau's book, which
it described as "a fable of spiritual renewal presented in the
narrative of a single cycle of seasons from summer to spring" [quoted
from the 1975 nomination as a National Historic Landmark]. In its first
finding, the study accepts the definition of Walden Woods as "a
distinct 2,680-acre ecosystem and cultural landscape, recognized and
celebrated by Thoreau, as described by [Thomas] Blanding and [Dr.
Edmund] Schofield. Its underlying geology permits definition of the
Woods with unusual clarity." Within the 2,680-acre Walden Woods is the
411-acre Walden Pond State Reservation, within which is the 62-acre
Walden Pond.
The NPS study principally credits private parties for championing
preservation of the Pond and the Woods. These included Emerson, the
local land trusts, the Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance, and the
Walden Woods Project. The report states that 60% of Walden Woods is
currently protected by a variety of conservation organizations. It
notes troubling problems, among them high visitor use (the highest of
any inland Mass. state park), the need for more water quality
monitoring to measure eutrophication impacts of swimmers, and the lack
of coordination among the many agencies and parties with
responsibilities for Walden.
Now to the "no" part of the report: the NPS concludes that it is not
feasible to continue the study of an enhanced NPS role in the
protection of Walden Pond and Woods. The NPS's reasons are the
following: the opposition of the selectmen of Concord and Lincoln; the
cost (if they were to be acquired) of the two hundred residentially
zoned parcels in the unprotected 40% of Walden Woods; and the fact that
the currently-protected 60% is being competently managed by the Walden
Pond State Reservation, the town land trusts and conservation
commissions, and the Walden Woods Project, the Wild and Scenic Rivers
Program, etc. [NPS contact : Brian_Aviles@nps.gov or 617-223-5319]
If I were asked, I would say again that prematurely terminating this
study is regrettable. Not all the threats to the Pond and Woods are
local (e.g., the dump, cell-towers, etc.). Some threats are caused by
distant decision-makers (e.g., federally-funded state highway
construction, Superfund cleanup of mercury in the Sudbury River,
pollutants in rain, increased noise from Hanscom Field, management of
visitor pressures, etc.). These threats are not resolved and more are
likely to arise. Allies are needed. A study of some sort of long-term,
flexible affiliation with the National Park Service could have helped,
as the Emerson heirs' deed of gift requires, to "preserve the Walden of
Emerson and Thoreau."
Stephen F. Ells