By Lisa Romano

If certain values get passed down from generation to generation within a family, then it’s no surprise Roan Katahdin became involved in conservation issues. Across the country in California, Roan’s grandmother was one of the founders in the early 1960s of Save the Bay, an influential conservation organization whose mission is to protect the San Francisco Bay, and she continued her involvement in open space preservation by being a vocal advocate for the establishment of an 8.5 mile state park along the shoreline of the SF Bay. Her penchant for activism must have trickled down for Roan found herself similarly called to action.

In the 1970s, Roan was living on Cape Cod. She witnessed the consequences of unfettered development on the Cape and began to feel that same call to duty her grandmother must have felt. Moving inland to Worthington, Roan decided to join the local planning board, a thankless job but one that is vital in making sure development is well planned and regulated. “Part of the reason I joined the planning board,” explains Roan, “is that I saw Cape Cod just blow off the map. Some of my favorite places  now have subdivisions on them.” Through a series of trainings and workshops, Roan has learned the ins and outs of town planning and finds it her mission to preserve open space, and thus the rural character that makes Worthington a special place to live. Currently, the Worthington planning board is rewriting the subdivision bylaw, greening it up to include a lot of open space. Being a planning board member doesn’t always make Roan, or the rest of the planning board for that matter, the most well liked in town. “The real hard sell,” she says, “is trying to get people to think and plan for 20 years down the road.”  But it is a price she says she feels is necessary in order to be sure Worthington doesn’t buckle under the development pressures that are gradually being felt in the far western reaches of the Pioneer Valley.

Besides providing the aesthetic benefit of open space, undeveloped land provides habitat for lots of critters. Who is living in these areas that humans haven’t moved into? Well, Roan is very active in a group that seeks to find that out. Keeping Track (www.keepingtrack.org) is a citizen science program based in Vermont that is aimed at monitoring the presence of large mammals in North America, which in New England includes everything from fishers to moose. Roan’s chapter, which covers areas around Worthington, is one of several that, through volunteer labor, identify important wildlife habitats and corridors to aid conservation planning. Roan is equipped to look for signs of wildlife (through tracks, scat, and other markers) after a year of training through Keeping Track. She and a handful of other trackers head out to designated transects several times a year to take data on what wildlife they find signs of. (If any readers have also found signs of wildlife, take a minute to post the details on MassACORN’s wildlife sightings message board:  http://massacorn.net/index.php/share. Or see if the sighting occurred on conservation land or in a large forest block with our mapping tool at http://massacorn.net/index.php/see-your-land.)  

The Keeping Track data can then be used by the community to determine which areas are supporting active populations and should be protected and how areas may be affected by proposed development.  “The data,” Roan explains, “become really handy when dealing with issues of development or property sales, so that we have scientifically collected data that is available to anybody, including land conservation organizations, planning boards, towns, etc.” This angle of land protection is a fun way for non-scientist members of the local community like Roan to be actively involved in some of the science behind land conservation. Keeping Track “is really a great way to get community people involved in doing something that’s fun and gets them outdoors and involved in local land conservation,” says Roan.

From her woodsy home in Worthington, a town that has been her home for the last two decades, Roan doesn’t seem intimidated by the challenges she faces in her efforts to prevent Worthington from suffering a similar fate as Cape Cod. She laughs that even with 20 years under her belt as a Worthingtonian, some in town still grumble that it’s newcomers like her on the planning board that are deciding the fate of the town; no one likes to be told what they can’t do. But thanks to the efforts of Roan and her fellow volunteers, Worthington (and those animals who make it their home as well) should have a bright, uncluttered future.