SWAMPSCOTT — Town officials are in the process of designating a newly acquired space at Archer Street as a conservation space, which the Swampscott Conservancy is hoping to turn the land into hiking trails.
“The Conservancy is working with the town to figure out how to develop that land, with hiking trails, and hopefully eventually some hands-on kind of interpretive information for kids and adults alike to learn about the natural space,” said Conservancy Board member Suzanne Hale. “It’s pretty rocky so it will be quite different from the other conservation spaces we have in town.”
If it is designated as a conservation space, nothing can be built upon it, she said.
“You cannot put anything there that isn’t natural. There can be some very specific directed invasive species removal or restoration processes, but that has to go through permitting in order to get that to happen,” Hale said. “Being designated as a conservation space is really important because we don’t have a ton of green space in Swampscott, so capturing what little we have left is really critical.”
As it stands, the Conservancy has a “hands-off” role with the project besides cleaning the area up. A clean-up of the space is slated for April 29, the same day the town is hosting “Earth Fest” — an Earth Day celebration.
“There’s just no formal trail system and so you don’t want to tell the public ‘oh just go and figure it out’ because you don’t want people to get hurt or to disturb ecosystems but we are going to do a cleanup of that space as kind of like a first round,” Hale said.
The Archer Street space isn’t the first area the Conservancy has helped make into a conservation space.
“The other spaces that we kind of helped to steward as the Conservancy are Harold King Forest,” Hale said. “We, with the help of an Eagle Scout a couple of years ago, created a new trail called the Forest River Connector and that connects basically the back of Swampscott Cemetery, where the dog park is, to Forest River, which is a conservation space in Salem.”
Hale stressed the importance of these types of spaces in town as climate change continues to worsen.
“You have to absorb the impacts, particularly of things like flooding and sea level rise. Our beaches are conservation spaces as well. And being able to preserve those spaces naturally is less expensive overall, and is also more effective in terms of being able to kind of be resilient and sustainable,” Hale said.
These spaces also help with mental health by being able to step away from screens and “static in your life and breathing some fresh air and getting literally a different perspective,” she said.
“Sometimes we get so absorbed into what’s kind of right in front of our face,” Hale said. “Getting the perspective to look outwards a bit more really helps center your mind.”
