As we near the end of the year, we celebrate our annual achievements through a myriad of sums and totals. Our Giving Tuesday campaign shared the following stats on Coalition achievements (links are to our News section stories throughout the year):

🌊 5,402 Water Samples Taken to Guide Bay Protection and Cleanup Efforts

Trained Baywatcher volunteers drive the sampling of our waters throughout the summer. We also depend on staff and volunteers for specialized nutrient testing four times a year. This year also featured the deployment of new autonomous loggers in sites around the Bay. All of this allows us to provide the most comprehensive and longest-running data on the health of Buzzards Bay.

🚣‍♀️ 2,500 Outdoor Exploration Program Participants

Throughout the year, the Coalition offers hundreds of free and low-cost activities across the watershed, from those geared to young children to those that introduce adults to our many properties and centers.

🙋‍♂️ 2,400 Students Engaged

Between our various programs, including those on the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey, and popular Onset Bay Center summer camps, the Buzzards Bay Coalition provides educational experiences to youth of all ages.

🏊 🚴 1,000 Swim and Ride Participants and Spectators

This year featured some record-breaking numbers in the Swim and Ride.

🚧 390 Acres of Wetlands Under Active Restoration

The active restoration projects range from relatively small projects in crucial areas, like the Wolf Island Bog project, to much larger projects, like Stuart Bogs.

🌲 2,187 Acres Conserved

With the Slocum-Gibbs Cranberry Farm purchase, this was our most active year in land preservation yet. The Coalition also preserved via conservation restrictions 196 acres of Paskamansett Woods in Dartmouth for clean drinking water purposes and 53 acres around Wide Marsh in Fairhaven for farming/salt marsh migration.

🚶‍➡️ 50 Miles of Trails Maintained

Our stewardship department spends countless hours maintaining trails to open up the watershed to all and monitoring lands, including nearly 5,000 acres of conservation restrictions.

🌎 10 New Special Places Permanently Protected

Included in the 10 properties we protected this year were Mendell Bogs in Marion and Connett Woods in Rochester, which will become part of the Headwaters Preserve once combined with portions of the Slocum-Gibbs property.

🚽 1 Wastewater Financing Committee Formed

The Coalition testified in front of the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources on July 1 on Beacon Hill to support bills that would establish a commission to study and recommend specific funding alternatives for essential wastewater improvement projects, as current funding options will not cover the more than two billion dollar issue here on the South Coast.

🎆 1 Largest Land Acquisition Completed in Coalition History

In June, the Coalition finalized the purchase of the 1,652-acre Slocum-Gibbs Cranberry Company property, which consists of land in the towns of Carver, Wareham, Rochester, and Middleboro. Vast forested uplands, cranberry bogs, and floodplain wetlands in two large contiguous components along the rivers will be protected, contributing to the growing corridor of conserved land here to make our local environment stronger and healthier.

If you would like the Coalition to continue to increase its impact in a variety of interesting ways and missed Giving Tuesday, please consider making a contribution to our Annual Fund campaign here.