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Berkshire Taconic Landscape Added to "Last Great Places" Website
The Nature Conservancy has added the Berkshire Taconic Landscape to its "Last Great Places" website, citing not only the area’s scenic, historic and cultural attractions, but also its role as one of the key ecological gems remaining in southern New England. The new educational website helps teachers, parents, children, residents, and everyone interested in nature, history and geography to learn more about the remarkable area, as well as some of the threats it now faces.
Located in the three-state region of southwestern Massachusetts, eastern New York and northwestern Connecticut, the 120,000-acre Berkshire Taconic landscape contains one of the largest, healthiest, and most diverse forest blocks remaining in southern New England. The wetlands that surround the mountainous forest are some of the best global examples of calcareous, or "sweet" water wetlands, and the entire landscape area is home to more than 150 rare and endangered species—one of the highest concentrations in New England. This integrated landscape has remained intact despite its location in the heart of the urban Northeast, but today faces increasing development pressure impacting both its ecological and cultural heritage.
Although its general point of reference is environmental conservation, the Berkshire Taconic website investigates the many cultural, commercial, historical and other dynamics that affect the natural environment. Compiled over the past year by a team of staff from the Conservancy and Intel Corporation, content includes contributions by many regional experts, including ecologists, historians, geologists, naturalists, planners and social scientists.
The Berkshire Taconic Landscape website is the second virtual tour in the "Last Great Places" site and can be accessed at <www.lastgreatplaces.org>. It joins the inaugural web-based tour of the San Pedro River of Mexico and southern Arizona.
Teachers from the Berkshire Hills Regional School District (MA), with support from Intel, the Nature Conservancy and an educational consultant, have developed nine lesson plans that make use of the new Berkshire Taconic Landscape website. There are three plans each for elementary, middle, and high school students. All conform to national and state standards in English language arts, science, math and social studies, and are available to other educators on the website. The "Diversity is the Spice of Life" lesson plan, for example, uses the website to help students learn how to classify plants and animals according to their physical characteristics. Another plan—"Aargh!!! Invaders!!!"—teaches students about invasive species in the Berkshire Taconic landscape and how to educate the public about them.
The Nature Conservancy is a private, international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 12 million acres in the US, and has helped conserve more than 80 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. For more info on the Nature Conservancy, visit <nature.org>.
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