Volunteers Needed to Help Grow, Preserve Berlin Open Land
By David Huck | Correspondent at June 27, 2024 | 10:15 am | Print
The town’s open space has swelled in recent years to nearly 2,000 acres, giving families, dog walkers, birders, hikers, and others a chance to explore deeper in the woods.
With that land, however, has come the need for volunteers to become stewards of the land, helping to blaze new paths, paint trail markings, make note of fallen trees after storms, and clear new growth each spring.
On a recent Saturday morning, around a dozen residents, as well as a hiker from Middletown, gathered at Timberlin Park to learn more about the town’s future expansion efforts and how to lend a hand towards maintaining the growing system of trails.
While the Connecticut Forest & Park Association helps coordinate volunteers who maintain and monitor the portion of the 825-mile blue blazed Metacomet and 50-mile Mattabesett trails that cuts through Berlin, additional help is needed for the town’s seven main open space areas. Those parcels include places like the Hatchery Brook Conservation area off of Orchard Road, Bicentennial Park, and Blue Hills Conservation area in the south Kensington section of town. The other parcels include Timberlin Park, Beckley Quarry Conservation Area, Pistol Creek, and Ragged Mountain.
In recent weeks, there have been a series of guided hikes held throughout town to inspire residents to adopt a section of trail. The next event will be held on June 28 at Beckley Quarry from 10 a.m. to noon. “A trail is a vehicle to get people out into a beautiful place that you can enjoy,” said Clare Cain, trail stewardship director for CFPA. “We’re trying to get younger people and families onto the trail system—a new generation to experience recreation in the woods.”
Jim Mahoney, director of economic development, told the group that there was a period of time where the town wasn’t acquiring open spaces. That’s since changed, as around 750 acres have been added since 2005. “We’ve come a long way and have started acquiring property,” Mahoney said, acknowledging the efforts of the Berlin Land Trust. Additionally, with the help of the CFPA, the condition of the town’s trails have improved. “If you walked trails 10-15 years ago in Berlin and you walk now, I hope you’ve seen a difference,” Mahoney said.
This fall, Mahoney said the town will likely finalize the $1.2 million deal to acquire 71 acres of the former Chotkowski orchard on the Chamberlain highway. With the acquisition that will be made with $500,000 in funding from a state grant, the town will have a 488 parcel of interconnected land, combining Bicentennial Park and Hatchery Brook Conservation area.
There environmental concerns at the former orchard that the town is working to mitigate, such as arsenic left from when it was sprayed on crops. Eventually, the Chotkowski property will contain trails, likely with wood chip paths in some sections, Mahoney said. An environmental management plan developed by the town is currently under review at the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Mahoney said.
Also in the fall, Mahoney plans to organize a workshop to help reroute part of the blue-blazed trail that runs through the Blue Hills Conservation area in order to move it away from neighboring homes. This area is not used that often and has a lot of potential, Mahoney said.
There is a town fund with around $150,000 in it that came from payments developers can make to the town in lieu of donating open space when subdivisions are constructed. That money could be used for future trail initiatives, such as constructing a bridge over a wet portion of a trail.
“There are lots of projects that I have envisioned,” Mahoney said. “It’s just a matter of having the time and volunteers to do them,” Mahoney said. “Things are just getting started here.”
Among the attendees at the workshop was a Cub Scout den leader, who brought a long his young son to learn more about how he could get his group involved in maintaining the trails.
During the workshop, Cain led the group on a hike on the green-blazed, Amelia Green trail, bringing along a folding saw, pruners, and a grub hoe for the surface or “tread” of the trail. She pointed out how to properly trim brush (don’t leave “coat hangers”) what makes for good trail markings (“about the size of a dollar bill”), good trail clearance (4-feet wide by 8-feet high) and basics on how to manage areas where water is prone to pool. She talked about how a volunteer can now take advantage of GPS’s on phones to get the exact location of a fallen tree to pass along to someone, such as the public works department, who have access to a chain saw. The best trail maintainers are those that don’t leave their mark, Cain said.
“We’ve come a long way in the management and maintenance of trails,” explained Cain. Previously, trails were often made by blazing a straight line up a hill, but has evolved to include more sustainable practices that lead to less erosion and are more friendly to all types of trail users.
Mahoney and the Berlin Conservation Commission are handling the volunteer assignments. Officials are looking for a range of volunteer abilities, from people comfortable with a chain saw to those looking to just provide monthly monitoring reports on trail conditions to the town. To get involved, contact Mahoney at [email protected] or call 860-8287005.
