BRPC is looking into the benefits of designating some of the county's land part of the National Forest system.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — There are 193 million acres in the national forest system. But, not one of those acres is in Massachusetts.

 

The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission is working to see if that can change — not by carving out a piece of land on the order of California's Sequoia National Forest, but by developing partnerships between private landowners interested in making their property part of a network of forestland with the National Forest designation.

 

"The [U.S.] Forest Service is interested in a new model for national forests," BRPC Assistant Director Thomas Matuszko said on Tuesday evening. "This designation, which hasn't been done before, is based on conservation restrictions with a small footprint. ... Property would still be held by private landowners, but there would be restrictions for certain practices ...

 

"We want to bring additional resources to the area as well as raise the visibility of the region as an important, resource-based area and an important area for forestry."

 

Matuszko came to McCann Technical School for a two-hour meeting attended by about three dozen landowners and public officials from towns throughout the 20-town region identified by the Berkshire commission and its counterpart, the Franklin County Council of Governments.

 

The two non-profits are in the beginning stages of developing a proposal that ultimately would need to be approved by select boards in at least some of the towns in the region, the state Legislature, the Congress and, of course, the Forest Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

"It's a long process," Matuszko said after the meeting. "But if it's going to happen, it has to start somewhere."

 

Matuszko emphasized throughout the meeting that his role was not to explain a fully-fledged idea but to gather input that can help frame the proposal down the road. Several times, he "turned around" questions on the questioner, asking how he or she would address the concern raised.

 

And just 30 minutes of the meeting was devoted to the formal presentation by Matuszko and Wendy Ferris of the Franklin Land Trust.

 

"A conservation restriction is a document that extinguishes certain rights for a parcel of land but reserves the right to farm, log or install trails," Ferris explained. "The land stays in private ownership and can be sold. The land remains on the municipal tax rolls."

 

Berkshire Regional Planning Commision Assistant Director Thomas Matuszko facilitated a meeting on a proposal Tuesday night.

And if the conservation restrictions work in conjunction with a National Forest designation, it could open the door to federal expenditures and bring other benefits to the region, Matuszko said.

 

Additional funds could be available from private sources to fund the purchase of conservation restrictions, state and federal resources could be available to promote tourism and the Forest Service itself might want to build a visitor's center and maybe even develop a demonstration forest somewhere in the region, Matuszko said, listing off several potential advantages to the program.

 

As he expected, not all of the initial reaction to the project was positive.

 

Several of the town officials in attendance expressed concern that the initiative could lead to more landowners putting their land in Chapter 61, the commonwealth's program that does offer property tax breaks in exchange for liens on private property.

 

"There's a struggle on the part of municipalities to keep services going in a rural area with a low tax base," one attendee said. "The federal government is just not in the business of helping with that situation."

 

The chairman of Clarksburg's Board of Selectmen Carl McKinney expressed several reservations about locking up more land in government-sanctioned forests and questioned whether any hoped-for federal spending in the region would come to fruition.

 

"Given the federal shutdown and the paralysis and the [temporary] closure of Parks Service land ... don't you think this will be on the chopping block?" McKinney asked.

 

"We already have the state of Massachusetts owning 53 percent of my town, and we get a whole lot of nothing — lip service — from Boston. ... If you get us into this program and the ax falls, we're locked into this permanently, and it could hurt town revenues...

 

Wendy Ferris of the Franklin Land Trust discussed conservation restrictions.

"The state already owns more than half our town. Where are the tourists going to go in Clarksburg? How will this benefit the town?"

 

Matuszko, whose group's mission includes "economic development and resource preservation," said he does not have all the answer and certainly cannot predict the future of federal funding. But the fact remains that the Forest Service does have a budget now and none of that money is coming back to Massachusetts.

 

Time will tell whether the BRPC and Franklin County Council of Governments will be able to develop a program that works for all parties involved, Matuszko said.

 

"The key takeaway we're talking about is we want to conserve forests while keeping them in public ownership," Matuszko said. "That's different than what has been talked about before, maybe, with the federal government coming in and buying up all the land...

 

"Land has different value. Some land is great for forestry. Some is great for environmental purposes. Some is great for recreational purposes. We want to create a menu of options to sign on to."

 

Matuszko thanked Tuesday's participants for all the feedback — and criticisms — that will help shape that menu.

 

"This is what I hoped we could get," he said after a particularly pointed comment from the floor. "If we can craft a proposal that works for the towns, we'll keep moving forward.

 

"We're advancing this concept because we think there's an opportunity. But you'll be the ultimate determiners of that."