Woodlands Partnership Votes to Approve Name Change
SHELBURNE FALLS, Mass. — After a final vote from its entire board on Tuesday, the Mohawk Trail Woodlands Partnership has changed its name to the Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts.
"The background of the name change is that there have been a number of comments over the past several years by members of the board about the appropriation of the name 'Mohawk Trail' as it applied to our public body," said board Chair Henry Art.
The partnership's executive committee voted at its meeting last month to bring a proposed name change to the full board. In addition to changing the name, the partnership is requesting the state legislature, along with the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture, officially recognize the change.
Aside from the appropriation of the term Mohawk, Art said there are several other reasons for the change, including the fact that the trail is part of only a third of the municipalities in the partnership.
"A woodlands partnership devoted to forest conservation and sustainable natural resource based economic development really has very little to do with a state highway, which might confuse the relationship that we do have," he said.
Board member Jeffrey Thomas suggested the name Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts, rather than Western Massachusetts. He said he thinks this name will help keep the group localized to the region.
"I didn't get involved in his thinking that I was going to be working to support a forest project in Southwick, or Sunderland, or Becket," he said. "... [Northwest Massachusetts] is more specific, and it would help put in some guardrails against scope creep for this group. And I worry about scope creep for dilution of effort, but also dilution of resources."
Art believes a broader name will allow the partnership to expand to other relevant communities, if the group decided to do so. He explained the enabling legislation for the partnership allows them to start adding more members as soon as next summer.
"In the future, we might want to extend our boundaries even farther south and east, which will get us even farther from the Route 2 corridor that's given its name to the partnership ... So if we want to increase to include Pittsfield and to include Greenfield and to include Hancock, which are currently not in the partnership geography, we can do that, but we should have a reason."
Also approved by the board was the partnership's 10-year plan, which it has been working on for several months.
"I think everybody who is provided reactions to the drafts as they went through, is to be thanked enormously. I personally think that the plan is so much better than it was a year ago," Art said.
The partnership held two information sessions, where the public could give feedback on the plan and organizational in August and September. Hayden said they received good feedback from the meetings and discussions with the select boards of various municipalities in the partnership.
"Some folks who have been opponents of the partnership, in terms of philosophically opposed to the idea of more active forest management, offered input about the importance of climate change," said said Lisa Hayden, administrative agent for the partnership. "Which, of course, the partnership recognizes it's in the enabling legislation creating us. But it was good feedback in that we could have been more overt in putting forth climate change within the plan."
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