This summer, Temple has called on its residents to participate in categorizing the town’s natural resources, as part of work being done this year to update the town’s planning documents.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the Planning Board held a forum where members of the Conservation Commission presented a draft update to the town’s natural resources inventory, which the boards expect to build upon this year.
Planning Board Chair Christine Robideaux said the inventory is part of grant work being done by the board this year to address housing in Temple, noting that one of the biggest concerns the town hears in its planning work is conserving green space and the town’s rural resources.
Sean Radcliffe, a member of the Conservation Commission, presented the updated draft of the report, which was compiled by Jeff Littleton, the chief ecologist of Moosewood Ecological, who was contracted to work on the inventory on behalf of the town.
“Temple still has large areas of intact wildlife habitat of statewide significance, extensive natural stream frontage, unique natural communities and large areas of unfragmented forest,” Littleton’s draft report reads. “The acquisitions of significant town-owned conservation and recreation lands such as the Temple Town Forest, Kendall Ledge, Weston Conservation Area and Quinn Memorial Bird Sanctuary, as well as Temple Mountain State Reservation and the numerous other protected properties, are cause for optimism. However, the protection of other valuable open space lands will become increasingly important.”
The goals of the report are to provide information for better management of town-owned and protected lands for wildlife and recreation, identifying town-owned lands or other properties that may warrant further protection, identifying threats to the town’s resources and informing land-use decisions or changes to the town’s regulation.
The draft report includes sections on types of natural resources in town, including water resources, ecological resources and soil resources, unfragmented lands and plant and animal species of concern that are located in Temple.
The draft has compiled state, federal and county data to prepare maps of known resources, and catalogs how much of them, by acre, exist in town.
Some of the data is incomplete. For example, there have been instances of sightings of the smooth green snake and wood turtle, two species of special concern in the state, but there has not been an exhaustive survey of these species. It is only known that they exist in town.
“Therefore, there is a major gap in information pertaining to species of conservation concern, as well as exemplary natural communities,” the natural resources inventory draft reads.
Radcliffe said the work to improve the town’s inventory of natural resources will be ongoing through the summer, and will include input from the wider community.
Littleton will continue to be involved, including by visiting tracts of special concern this summer. Littleton has already done some of the work to identify those areas, with specific interest in properties with rare species of animals or plants, habitat or invasive plants or insects.
The town may be reaching out to private landowners to request permission to access their land for the inventory, and are seeking feedback on possibly important pieces of property.
The other aspect where the town is seeking community help is a “bioblitz,” an event where a group of volunteers focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time.
Radcliffe suggested residents use the app iNaturalist, which allows users to photograph and catalog nature, and helps users identify species and log where they were seen.
The Conservation Commission and Planning Board intend to organize the community effort this summer. The boards will post updates to their pages on the town’s website.
The draft of the natural resources inventory is available on the town’s website, on the Planning Board page.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.