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Abstract
A gallery of 17 Items - An Anti-Nuke Protest
Description
The Montague Plains are located in the Town of Montague, Franklin County, Massachusetts. "In the wee morning hours of February 22, 1974, Sam Lovejoy, a member of one of the local communes near Montague, Massachusetts, slipped onto the Montague Plains and sabotaged the 500 foot weather tower Northeast Utilities had erected to test wind direction at the site. (A company official later explained that the data was needed so that authorities would know which way the radiation would blow from the plant in case of an accident.)" Source: Zinn Education Project via the Internet.
The 1,500+ acre Montague Plains WMA was acquired in 1999 from Northeast Utilities in order to protect one of the largest inland examples of pitch pine/scrub oak natural community remaining in Massachusetts and the Northeast region. The site comprised predominately even-aged, closed canopy forest habitat, although elements of a regionally important fire-adapted pitch pine/scrub oak natural community were still present at the site at the time of acquisition. Of the 1,500+acres, roughly 700 acres were/are transitional Northern Hardwood/Mixed Oak forest, while about 800 acres were mixed pine/oak forest with inclusions of tree oak and scrub oak. Much of this WMA has historically been influenced by fire, but human fire exclusion beginning in the early 1900’s allowed for the build-up of dangerous fuel loads that have the potential to result in uncontrollable crown fires that readily threaten private property and lives. Indeed, wildfires that originate d within what is now the Montague Plains WMA destroyed houses in the nearby village of Lake Pleasant in 1938. There have been more than 100 wildfires reported in the last 75 years. Source: https://www.mass.gov/doc/montague-plain-wma-site-plan/download