Preserving Massachusetts Testimony

Good afternoon Chairman Petroccelli, Chairman Straus, and members of the committee. Thank you for allowing me to testify today.

My name is Eleanor Fort, I’m the Preservation Associate for Environment Massachusetts. Environment Massachusetts is a state-wide, citizen-based environmental advocacy group that works to protect the Commonwealth’s clean air, clean water, and open spaces.

As part of that mission, we hope to protect the landscapes, the habitats, the plants and the animals that help define our state’s natural heritage. The humpback whale, which mesmerizes tourists and residents alike, is an endangered species here in Massachusetts. The bald eagle, the symbol of our national identity, is endangered here in Massachusetts but is not on the federal list.

Environment Massachusetts strongly opposes House Bill 4167 because it as a step backward in the fight to protect the species that are endangered, threatened and of special concern in the Commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Endangered Species Act charges the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, within the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife of the Department of Fish and Game to map the areas where volatile species rely on special habitats, designates those areas as Priority Habitat, and distributes the maps in print and online to towns and landowners across the state. Over 400 plant and animal species are currently listed under MESA as endangered, threatened, or of concern.

The Commonwealth’s biodiversity must give credit to 20 years of strong environmental protection under MESA, including protecting the habitat that is critical to the reproduction, feeding, and migration of these species. Without habitat protection, MESA will loose the enforcing mechanisms that have made it such an effective environmental law for the last 2 decades.

House Bill 4167 effectively revokes all habitats that have had the purpose of protecting species that are endangered, threatened, and of special concern species to date, leaving these plants and animals vulnerable to critical habitat loss. It would gut the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act and render the Division unable to effectively enforce the necessary protection. The result would be a little more than a list of plants and animals on a piece of paper with no concrete steps to protect them.

As a group that works to protect the open spaces that are an asset to the Commonwealth, our interest is also in protecting the plants and animals that live in those spaces.