Boston Natural Areas Network

CONTACT:

62 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02110
(617) 542-7696
www.bostonnatural.org

Valerie Burns, President

DESCRIPTION:

For over 25 years the Boston Natural Areas Network (BNAN-Cat.'98) has worked to preserve, increase, and improve open spaces in Boston, through community organizing, acquisition and management of special urban lands, and programming. All across the city, BNAN's Urban Wilds, Greenways, and Community Gardens programs have transformed blighted lots into healthy urban oases that enhance wildlife habitat, control erosion, filter water, clean the air, and generally enhance the quality of life in our neighborhoods.

BNAN's newest project — City Natives — will create a native plant nursery for the City that will help bring Boston into line with current conservation science and practice, which favor native plants over exotic, ecologically inappropriate, and often destructively invasive, species. Sited on DCR land (which BNAN helped acquire) along the Neponset River in Mattapan, the nursery will — as with all BNAN programs — engage local residents as volunteers to enhance their own neighborhoods. You can help launch this significant next step in the ongoing struggle for our greener, healthier, more beautiful city.

(2001: NATURE: Environment: Urban Environment)