For Fall Adventures, Consider the State’s Wildlife Sanctuaries

September 15, 2022

By Abigail Lindner

While summer is the most popular time for travel and vacationing in the United States, the other seasons offer their own invigorating opportunities for adventure. From autumn we have cooler weather, which beckons us outdoors to an extent that summer’s heat and humidity don’t. Road trips are ideal for admiring fall foliage and, according to a survey from the American Automobile Association, they are the preferred activity for fall travelers.

Fortunately for New Englanders, we don’t have to go far to experience “classic autumn.” In Massachusetts, one option for these autumn explorations is to visit the many wildlife sanctuaries and refuges located across the state. These environments include twelve National Wildlife Refuges maintained by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, over a hundred wildlife refuges owned by Mass Audubon (more than half of which are open to visitors), dozens of eye-catching woodlands and parks cared for by The Trustees of Reservations, and hundreds of thousands of acres of state parks through the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation.

Why Visit a Wildlife Sanctuary?

As the U.S. population boomed and technological development accelerated in the twentieth century, conservation of the wild places that remained became a point of interest. Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, headed efforts at the executive level. During his administration, 230 million acres of public land came under federal protection, constituting 150 national forests, fifty-one federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and eighteen national monuments.

Wildlife sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, also called nature reserves or nature preserves, play an integral role in enhancing community resilience against natural disasters, conserving wildlife that is often threatened by human growth, and encouraging biodiversity. In addition to the benefits collected by the species who build their lives in them, these sanctuaries have mental and educational goods for human visitors.

First, wildlife sanctuaries reinforce the health-and-nature connection often lost when one lives in a suburban and urban setting. Research in natural, social, and health sciences consistently finds that contact with nature enhances psychological well-being, including measures of positive affect, happiness, sense-making, and positive social interactions.

Contact with nature also decreases incidence of negative well-being and mental illness. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden (1854), “We need the tonic of wildness.” Wildlife sanctuaries have an additional advantage over the artificially constructed nature of urban green spaces by having richer biodiversity, which is associated with greater improvements in mental well-being than natural environments with low biodiversity.

Second, wildlife sanctuaries, in drawing humans back into the wild places, promote pro-environmental behavior. As the saying goes: Out of sight, out of mind. It is easy to forget about the impacts of our consumer decisions on the natural environment if the built environment is what predominantly surrounds us. A visit to a wildlife sanctuary is an opportunity to re-entangle ourselves with that which is outside our built, anthropocentric worlds and realize that humans are not some entity separate from nature. A bond with nature can support a new (or renewed) conviction to conserve it.

Wildlife Sanctuaries in Massachusetts

Sanctuaries are located in every region of Massachusetts, including Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, owned by the state or federal government or by private organizations. The sites encompass a variety of habitats, including wetland in Sudbury’s Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service); woodlands and meadows in Princeton’s Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary (Mass Audubon); and salt marsh and coastal islands in Essex’s Crane Wildlife Refuge on the Crane Estate (The Trustees).

In addition to this visual variety, there are a plethora of programs and events to learn about and more deeply explore the habitats in these protected lands. Across the sites, visitors can participate in self-paced or naturalist-led walks along trails, birding, nature photography workshops and classes, field studies, scavenger hunts, and more. Some also have educational, nature-based programs geared toward school-aged children and youth.

This fall, consider stepping into one of the many wildlife sanctuaries in Massachusetts. They abound with opportunities to learn about state wildlife, join conservation and preservation efforts, and explore the rich New England landscapes that have inspired authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Frost. You might be surprised by the wild places you find.

Works Cited

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Thumbnail photo by Tim Dusenberry: https://www.pexels.com/photo/nature-forest-trees-river-12616458/