STEWARDSHIP FOCUS AREA |
The Stewardship Focus Area (SFA) is Research at WBNERR has clearly demonstrated that changes in land use within the watershed are capable of causing serious degradation of natural resources within the Waquoit Bay estuary. Thus, WBNERR is concerned with land use planning throughout the Waquoit Bay watershed, particularly activities that are known to increase watershed derived nitrogen loads to the estuary (i.e., discharge of nitrogen to the atmosphere, land, surface water or groundwater) and all lands within the watershed of the Waquoit Bay estuarine system are included in the SFA. Most land within the Waquoit Bay watershed that has not been set aside for conservation has already been developed for residential, commercial, retail and military aviation uses. Nonetheless, several undeveloped parcels containing important habitat or other attributes of value to advance WBNERR’s mission still exist. Additionally, there are some parcels that lie outside of the Waquoit Bay watershed that have been included in the MNWR boundary because they are the last remaining contiguous parcels of representative coastal terrestrial and freshwater wetland habitats remaining in the vicinity of the estuary. WBNERR has an interest in the ecological integrity of the habitats contained on these lands as well. Therefore, all lands included in the MNWR land acquisition boundary are included in the WBNERR SFA. The WBNERR Stewardship Focus Area, thus, includes all of the following areas:
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the geographic planning area identified by WBNERR that contains those lands and resources that, if altered, are likely to change (improve or degrade) the quality of resources and/or uses within the Reserve boundary. The SFA includes the designated lands and waters of the Reserve, as well as other lands as defined below.