Minutes of 10 March Meeting of the Friends

Our speaker at the 10 March meeting was Christine Berry, Land Protection Specialist with the DCR. Christine described the land protection program at DCR in general, and some of the projects she is working on to protect land which will become part of the Harold Parker State Forest. The DCR has $2M to spend on acquiring property that would make a good addition to the State Forest system, and we are very happy to have her working toward saving land to add to our forest. If anyone knows of land that would be a good fit and is available for purchase, she can be reached at 978-887-5931 x30

We also had a lively discussion about invasive species, with our resident expert, Walter Kittredge, who is a biologist at Harvard describing the problems of water chestnut and glossy buckthorn. Walter has offered to give a detailed talk about invasive species in the HPSF at an upcoming FOHP meeting - we're looking forward to that! For homework, spend some time at the Invasive Plants of New England site.

We talked some about the formalizing the FOHP organization, and the benefits of having a 501(c)3 tax exemption in order to raise money. Steve David said that there would be great opportunities to raise money at the campground, such as selling firewood, camping sundries, etc. We'll be discussing this idea in more detail at our next meeting.

Barbara Buls raised the opportunity to be involved in the "Park Serve" program on 24 April and we all agreed that we should plan a spring clean-up at HPSF on that date. (see separate post)

Next meeting: Wed 14 April at 7PM at REI (as usual). Hope to see you there!