By Carole Owens
To follow up on BNRC President Jenny Hansell’s appeal, maintenance of conserved land is increasingly expensive as the pressure to develop land also increases.
The pressure is not from developers only. The Commonwealth passed two laws in 2025 that make building on land easier and protecting it for agriculture, forestry, or recreation much harder.
The Clean Air Act encourages clear cutting and placement of thousands of solar panels and windmills. The plan is intended to decrease energy costs and use renewable energy, but it will also destroy the oxygen producers (trees) and deplete open space. Similarly, the Affordable Homes Act seeks to build thousands of houses to meet the need. Both acts remove local control over zoning – let me repeat that – remove local control and place it with the state to facilitate development. As our local Planning Board struggles with a plan to evaluate land conserved under Chapter 61, the state renders whatever they decide irrelevant as final decisions move from Stockbridge to Boston.
At the same time that private nonprofits seek more funding to protect what land they have amassed, some are giving land back to the Town of Stockbridge or limiting what they will accept even as a gift due to the costs of maintenance.
Our Town seems to be funding limitless services with limited resources. BPI was founded to lend a hand as all the laudable public and private organizations are under increased pressure.
Now preservation is not for everyone. Some would rather progress than preserve. But consider: those old buildings, the grounds of those estates, are the bases of our current economy. Unless we have something to replace it, we better preserve it. That land is our oxygen producers, habitats for other species, and scientists say, restore our mental and physical health. People knew that intuitively as they rushed to semi-rural communities in their flight to safety from COVID. Still, not for everyone. Some want us to plan the future not save the past. Maybe it is not an either/or. Perhaps we should consider all the arguments. Weigh them, and before we blanket our community with solar panels and tiny houses, lose trees it takes 100 years to replace, lose more clean air that we produce, perhaps we should consider the choices with the fewest consequences; that allow us to pause and see what comes next. The one thing you can depend upon is change. The predictions for that change include the population decreasing, the cost of all necessities increasing, and human needs for oxygen remaining unchanged.
