Welcome to the Swampscott Conservancy! We’re so happy you’ve come to visit us. Please enjoy your experience on this site, and we hope to see you at our next meeting or event!
The Conservancy’s Annual Meeting will be held remotely on Monday, April 27 at 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Click here for more information.
View informative videos on our YouTube channel.
Conservancy News
Read our Current Newsletter and catch up on past editions:
The Swampscott Conservancy strongly supports open spaces at the Hawthorne site. For more information see the Nature in the Neighborhood article below or click here.
The Swampscott Conservancy is announcing a Youth Conservation Grant Program designed to provide support to Middle and High School students who wish to make positive environmental change in their community and more broadly New England.
Who can apply? Students who live or attend school in Lynn or Swampscott and are in Grades 6 to 12 are eligible to apply for funds to support a project aimed at making a difference in our natural world. Individual students or groups are welcome to apply. Click here for more information and to apply.
Thanks to the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lynn and all who attended for making our event Monday night such a success. Please read more about it in the Swampscott Tides. Photo by Dick Simmons.
Earth Day 2026 Message from the Swampscott Conservancy
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders took a photo that was later described by photographer Galen Rowell “as the most influential environment photograph ever taken.” In the darkness of space, the image captures the Earth rising above the barren lunar horizon. Dubbed “Earthrise,” this iconic photo inspires awe and transcendence and helped launch the environmental movement of 1960s. A little over a year after it was taken, the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. Earth Day celebrations have continued in the ensuing five decades and have grown to be a global event for environmental action and awareness with millions of participants.
Many years after taking the Earthrise photo, Anders remarked that “we set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth.” Today, we again have an opportunity to discover the Earth through heart-catching images from space, thanks to the recently launched Artemis II space mission. Fittingly, the Earthrise image is the official NASA emblem for this mission, which will take four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon.
Ander’s 1968 Earthrise image and the recent photos from Artemis II serve to remind us of how large the universe is and how small and fragile our planet. This Earth Day, on April 22, we will celebrate the “pale blue dot” we call home and also acknowledge our responsibility to ensure a healthier, more sustainable future for the planet.
This year’s official Earth Day theme is “Our Power, Our Planet.” earthday.org/earth-day-2026/. Behind the theme is a recognition that environmental stewardship has never depended on a single political administration, institution, or election but is “sustained by the daily decisions of communities, educators, workers, innovators, and families who understand that protecting the places they live and work is both a responsibility and a long-term investment.” Thus, “Our Power, Our Planet” reflects a fundamental truth that transcends political cycles. It is a commitment to stewardship, resilience, and shared accountability — a call for every individual, community, and sector to exercise their power in service of the planet we all depend on.
Accordingly, the Earthday.org website maintains that every individual has the power to create change, whether it be by joining in community cleanups, tree plantings, or peaceful demonstrations, and by contacting elected officials, teaching others, and making sustainable choices in our daily lives. The website offers 50 suggestions on ways you can act in service of the planet this Earth Day and provides resources to help you succeed.
Images like Earthrise ushered in an awareness of the Earth as a whole, transcending borders and boundaries. Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut to travel to deep space, emphasized the unifying power of seeing Earth from such a distance when he said, “no matter where you are from or what you look like, we’re all one people.”
Wishing you a Happy Earth Day from your friends at the Swampscott Conservancy.
Nature in the Neighborhood – April 2026
Biodiversity in Our Neighborhood
The first image that may come to mind when someone mentions biodiversity is a tropical rainforest filled with exotic plants and animals, and not your local neighborhood. But biodiversity – or biological diversity – refers to the variety of flora and fauna found in all types of environments. Not just distant, wild places – it is all around us, even right in our own backyards.
Yes, tropical rainforests, with their cacophony of birds calls, monkey chatter, and insect buzzing, contain an extremely rich diversity of flora and fauna, more than found in our part of the world. Nevertheless, there is also a surprising amount of biodiversity right here in our own neighborhood. On the iNaturalist “Swampscott Biodiversity Project” page, out of the 13,250 sightings made over the past decade, 1,947 different species of plants and animals have been recorded (www.inaturalist.org/projects/swampscott-biodiversity). More observations are continually added to the project including, within the last couple of months, the sightings of a Peregrine Falcon, Red-tailed Hawk, Greater Scaup, and Pale Bellied Brant (the latter two are winter-visiting shorebirds who will soon be commuting back north).
A nonprofit social network for naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists, iNaturalist maps and shares biodiversity observations worldwide. You can upload photos or audio recordings of organisms you observe using the easily-downloaded app, and iNaturalist will suggest possible identification. Every observation you make contributes to biodiversity science, whether it is the rarest butterfly or the most common backyard weed. Your findings are shared with scientific data repositories, thereby enabling scientists to find and use your data. So, the iNaturalist platform serves as a field guide, citizen science tool, and resource for biodiversity research and conservation.
Biodiversity is more than just a catalog of individual organisms in a specific ecosystem; it is all the species taken together, their genetic makeup, and their complex relationships and interactions. Each species, and each animal and plant, contributes to the overall health and resilience of that ecosystem. This complex network of interconnections among all living organisms and their environments is aptly termed the web of life.
If one part of the web is disrupted, the entire ecosystem can suffer. As the ecological thinker and environmental advocate John Muir noted: “Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Maintaining biodiversity is necessary for ecological stability and also for human well-being because, whether we like it or not, our species is also caught in the web of life. A decline in biodiversity can have profound effects on us. Biodiversity provides countless benefits, often ones we don’t see: Forests purify the air we breathe and sequester carbon; wetlands filter water and protect against flooding; and bees pollinate crops. Many medicines, from antibiotics to cancer treatments, are derived from plants and animals. Some estimates show that these ecosystem services contribute trillions of dollars to the global economy.
Unfortunately, species are vanishing at rates a thousand times more than ever in Earth’s history. The extinction of species is due to a perfect storm of factors: habitat destruction (e.g., the clearing of forests and draining of wetlands for agriculture and development); air, water, soil, light and noise pollution; invasive species that outcompete native species; and climate change that alters habitats faster than a species can adapt.
The good news for Massachusetts is that biodiversity conservation is a priority for the Healey-Driscoll Administration. In 2023 Governor Healey made history when she signed Executive Order No.618 into law directing the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) to recommend biodiversity conservation goals for 2030, 2040 and 2050 along with strategies to meet those goals.
In August of last year, the DFG submitted a 25-year plan “to place biodiversity at the center of our climate and environmental agenda and invest in nature to sustain our health and well-being, food security, economy, and way of life.” www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-biodiversity-goals-report-2025/download
Recognizing that biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate – citing the loss of over three billion birds in North America, the decline of Atlantic cod, and the fact that one rarely sees fireflies in summer backyards – the DFG concluded that the time has come to “halt and reverse the decline of species and restore nature for the benefit of all.”
To achieve that goal, the DFG report proposes four goals:
- PROTECT – Doubling the pace of land protection to conserve 40% of the state by 2050, strategically protecting 425,000+ acres of the most important habitats, and also seeking designation of Cashes Ledge, a vital habitat for marine life, as a National Marine Sanctuary.
- RESTORE – Restoring 75% of the most important species habitats, such as degraded salt marshes and marine ecosystems.
- SUSTAIN – Valuing the ecosystem services biodiversity provides by, among other efforts, supporting biodiversity-friendly farms and enhancing the resilience of fisheries.
- CONNECT – Launching a Local Biodiversity Grant Program to fund community-led efforts to conserve nature in every neighborhood, develop biodiversity-focused curriculum in schools, and launch public education campaigns that invest in access to nature for all.
Citizens will be able to actively support Massachusetts’ biodiversity goals through these local conservation projects, habitat restoration, education programs, and participation in community grants and partnerships. But there are steps you can take right in your own backyard. This includes planting native species that are adapted to our local environment and provide food and shelter for insects, birds, and wildlife. Many local garden centers are stocking native plants and the Conservancy will be selling them at the Swampscott Farmer’s Market on June 7th this year. Another step you can take is to minimize pesticide use in your garden. This protets pollinators and other beneficial fauna that are part of the web of life and that keep the local ecosystem functioning smoothly.
E.O. Wilson, the noted biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist, who is quoted on the opening page of the DFG report, believed that “there can be no purpose more inspiring than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.”
The time for tackling the biodiversity crisis and beginning the age of restoration is now – and it starts in our own neighborhoods.
Learn More
Professor Colleen Hitchcock, a professor of Ecology at Brandeis University in the Biology Department and chair of the Environmental Studies Program, will be delivering the keynote address at the Swampscott Conservancy’s Annual Members Meeting. Her presentation, “Nature’s Changing Clock: The Signature of Climate Change on Biodiversity,” will focus on the changing seasonal timing of natural events – have you noticed earlier blooms and later fall foliage in recent years? – and the effects on biodiversity.
The meeting will be held virtually on Monday, April 27, 2026, at 6:30pm. Information on how to join the meeting will be posted on the Conservancy’s website: swampscottconservancy.org. You don’t have to be a member to listen to the Keynote Address, only possess an interest in learning about the scientific study of phenology – the timing of biological events such as flowering and leafing of plant life – and how this timing can be shifting as a result of changing temperature and rainfall patterns related to climate change. And importantly, you will learn about the significance of crowd-sourced data, community science, and how you can participate in the study.
Opportunity to Participate
The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is in its 10th year of celebrating Boston-area biodiversity and welcomes you to be a part of this global effort to document biodiversity through participatory science. In the Town of Swampscott, the Conservancy will host a CNC event to explore biodiversity at Muskrat Pond Conservation Area (off Forest Avenue.). More information will be posted on the Conservancy’s website. Hope you can join us!
Toni Bandrowicz, President
Swampscott Conservancy
EMPOWER OUR CAUSE!
Donations to the Swampscott Conservancy are an invaluable resource that must be tapped in the fulfilling of the crucial and altruistic goals that are laid out in our organization’s mission statement, and which are embodied by our dedicated members and our ongoing activities. All monetary contributions will be applied in the direct interest of furthering the natural wonder of our community; whether a member or not, your assistance is greatly appreciated and will be perceived in one way or another by any and all who immerse themselves in Swampscott’s natural, open spaces. Thank you for supporting The Conservancy and empowering your local community!
