
A number of conservation areas on the Vineyard are receiving state funding to help prevent invasive species from degrading local forests and to mitigate wildfire hazards
The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation has been awarded $75,000 to manage southern pine beetle-infested pitch pine forest at Caroline Tuthill Preserve in Edgartown. The Nature Conservancy has been awarded $65,100 to conduct prescribed burns at Katama Plains in Edgartown and the Frances Newhall Woods Preserve in West Tisbury and Chilmark, which have undergone prescribed burns in prior years.
The funds were distributed by the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s habitat management grant program and were included with four other projects around the state for a total of $325,000. With 28 percent of the state’s land committed to conservation, according to fish and game, the funding is to help with management.
Adam Moore, executive director of the Sheriff’s Meadow, said the funding will be used to help keep the invasive Southern pine beetles from encroaching into the Tuthill preserve. A scourge of beetles were discovered on the Island about two years ago, and they have already left some of the Vineyard’s pine forests in ruins, especially the Sheriff’s Meadow’s Phillips Preserve.
Moore said that they will use the funding to thin the forests. The pine beetle hasn’t arrived at the Tuthill preserve yet, but he said that it ultimately will and research shows that thinning forests will help the forests be more resilient to the beetle. He also notes that thinning will help reduce the overall fire risk by reducing the amount of fuel for fires.
“We are really grateful to get that grant,” Moore said.