Overview
The Wildlands and Woodlands Vision proposes the protection of 1.5 million acres of forests from development in which:
250,000 acres of mostly publicly-owned forestland would be set aside as Wildland reserves and would be embedded within
1.5 million acres of privately-owned Woodlands managed for multiple goods and services.
Learn more about Wildlands
Learn more about Woodlands
Where does the figure of 1.5 million acres come from?
The Wildlands and Woodlands Partnership encourages people and organizations to work together through informal partnerships to provide information to landowners on how they can manage their forests and conserve them from development. Partners collaborate to encourage management of privately-owned forestland and to increase the pace of land protection in their region.
Learn more about the Wildlands and Woodlands Partnership
Learn more about Regional Conservation Partnerships
Why 1.5 Million Acres?
There are roughly 5 million acres of land in Massachusetts:
- 1 million acres are developed
- 1 million acres are protected from development already
- Roughly 3 million acres remain to be either developed or protected from development.
Wildlands and Woodlands proposes that at some point between 2030 and 2050 half of these 3 million acres of forest, or 1.5 million acres, should be protected from development even as the other half is developed.
Figure 11 - W and W