Pelham Lake Park is a treasured forest and lake landscape located in the heart of Rowe, Massachusetts. The 1,345-acre park occupies most of the northern triangle of land between Pond Road and Davis Mine Road. Over 1,260 of these acres are forested. Another 81 acres makes up the surface area of Pelham Lake itself. From the shores of the lake, the forest stretches up the mountainside and provides a range of ecotypes, places to explore, and habitat for wildlife. Over twenty miles of trails wind through the park, providing access and recreational opportunities for local residents and nearby community members. The Town of Rowe Park Commission, who stewards the park, is intentionally managing for a resilient forest using a combination of passive and active approaches. About half of Pelham Lake Park is designated as a wildlands preserve, where passive management allows natural disturbance to be the primary driver of change. In some areas outside of the wildlands preserve, active management is used to protect species impacted by forest pests and increase the diversity of young trees across the landscape. A forest with healthy trees of all ages and diversity of species will be able to better adapt to climate change impacts that are increasing over time, sustaining ecological health, biodiversity and species richness in the park.
At the start of the management planning process, stewardship goals were created through an iterative process involving town residents, the Rowe Parks Commission, the Park Manager, and the consulting foresters hired to prepare the plan. Community-centered planning, outreach, education, and consensus building allowed town residents to be directly involved with decisions relating to the stewardship of their forests and the use of sustainable forest management practices (see Project Status section, below).
Through this process, the town identified significant vulnerabilities in the forest (see Challenges, below). A healthy and resilient future forest with a diverse array of species was identified early on as an important climate-adaptation outcome that would inform the management actions taken on this land. Tackling the Park’s primary vulnerability to climate change — a lack of young tree seedlings and saplings (regeneration) — was a critical priority.
A focus on facilitating natural processes that improved forest regeneration and diversity was identified as critical to project success. Recognizing that the target forest condition needed structural complexity and multiple age classes of trees, Rowe embraced management concepts informed by ecological knowledge and innovative forestry practices. Planting and protecting a younger cohort of trees was considered an important step, as was protecting and passively managing parts of the forest that could remain undisturbed. These passively managed areas can allow for natural processes to play out and offer an alternate adaptation pathway when other areas of the park are more actively stewarded. Outside of the wildland reserve areas, the town’s stewardship efforts focused on actively diversifying the forest understory, a priority because of site wide impacts of deer browse, which have required the town to think creatively to promote the generation of healthy forest. Additional goals focused on monitoring and countering the impacts of invasive species in the park, including small populations of invasive plants, pests and pathogens. Maintaining and improving recreational and education opportunities were also identified as high priority.
Pelham Lake Park is an important ecological area that presents both huge opportunities and high vulnerability and risks. This large, natural forest provides a place for a diversity of species to flourish, and fortunately the presence of invasive plant species on the land is relatively minimal. Management decisions on this unique landscape needed to consider several often overlapping and compounding factors that influence forest health.
Climate Change
Altered precipitation patterns and extreme weather events are expected in this region. These dramatic changes can influence or damage trail infrastructure, forest ecological health, and hydrologic patterns. Higher winter temperatures are a compounding factor in managing pest and pathogen stressors (see below), as they increase survivability of species whose populations have historically been held in check by cold temperatures.
Deer Pressure
Abundant white-tailed deer populations are damaging local ecosystems through extensive and damaging browsing. Historically, the number of deer on the landscape has been held in check through predatory pressure. With the extirpation of predators like wolves and mountain lions and less human hunting, populations have boomed. Since they browse extensively on young shoots and saplings, forest plant and tree diversity is suffering.
Pests and Pathogens
Hemlock wooly adelgid, emerald ash borer, beech bark disease and the rapidly increasing presence of beech leaf disease in the region are impacting the health and survival of hemlock, beech and white ash trees in the park. Hemlock and beech are both shade-tolerant, long-lived tree species that provide important resources to wildlife. White ash is less common in the park but would be a species expected to do well as the climate changes if not for the current extreme threat of mortality.
Land Use History
Pelham Lake Park is on the unceded lands of multiple Indigenous communities, this includes the Nipmuc/k who are still present and actively caring for land in the region and the Stockbridge Munsee who have been displaced to reservations outside the state but maintain a presence in what is now known as Western Massachusetts. Prior to the violent actions of the occupying colonial government to remove Indigenous peoples from the landscape, there were many Indigenous communities who played a role in stewarding the area now known as Pelham Lake Park and have since lost relationship with the land. During European colonization, the area was intensively deforested for agriculture. Today, the forest reflects the changes that this history introduced: a simplified composition and structure that does not support or accurately reflect the pre-colonial biodiversity and structural complexity once present on this land. This degraded condition of the forest increases the impacts of diseases, pests, and other disturbances that are now being intensified by climate change.
Reserve Designation
The Pelham Lake Park charter indicates that many areas (about half of the acreage) in the park are designated as “covenant areas,” which are defined as areas that are free from any management or human influence, including deer hunting and timber harvesting. However, in light of the challenges outlined here, there are many novel risks to the forest that the covenant authors could not have predicted. While designating reserves is a climate smart forestry practice, reserves are best designated based on an analysis of long-term vulnerability and should save room for adaptive management in the event of extreme events such as a pest or pathogen outbreak. The covenants were not written with vulnerability or adaptive land care in mind which has presented challenges as to how to address the extreme impacts of deer and to respond to the impacts of pests like emerald ash borer.
The hydrology of the park is complex and includes many flashy mountain streams draining off the peaks of Mounts Adams and Todd; a set of more established brooks and wetlands in the lowlands; vernal pools and marshy areas; and of course, the lake. Potter Brook and Tuttle Brook join near the park’s northern boundary and then flow together into the eastern side of the lake. Exiting the lake, Pelham Brook then flows on to join the Deerfield River about 4 miles downstream. Davis Mine Brook has its headwaters in the eastern uplands of the park. Climate change modeling scenarios for the region indicate a high likelihood of increased and more intense precipitation events that will test the limits of the natural hydrology here and could be a consideration for maintaining the dam at the outlet of the lake.
A historical farm abandonment land use pattern is typical across much of the Pelham Lake Park Woods, as it is across much of New England. Stonewalls, wire fencing, and modified soil profiles attest to the agricultural past. The historic legacies of stone piles in old mowing, animal pens, cellar holes, and barn foundations all tell the tale of European settlers’ past here. Prior to removal and dispossession of the land many Indigenous Peoples including the Mohican, Wabanaki, and Nipmuc Tribes used these uplands as fishing and hunting grounds. Members of Indigenous Tribes are present in the region today and participate in important stewardship and care for the land.
Management Strategy
The consulting foresters hired by the Town of Rowe prescribed specific interventions to meet the communities’ goals at Pelham Lake Park. These strategies were designed to address the challenges outlined above while simultaneously and proactively preparing for new or expected challenges in the future. These strategies ranged from active and “hands-on,” to a more passive approach of allowing natural processes to evolve without human intervention.
In the covenant areas of the park where active management is limited and a more passive approach is appropriate, the Town elected to focus on enhancing educational and recreational opportunities. A trail assessment generated a database of all trails in the park and diagnosed their current and future needs, including predictions about climate change impacts. This work resulted in the sunsetting of one trail that was being eroded and the creation of a new trail nearby with signage to educate visitors about old-growth structure and function. A timeline for trail improvements was created from this work. This data was also used to create an updated map of park trails.
Park managers also chose to leave a portion of the park by the Davis Mine trailhead completely unmanaged. This will allow them, as well as members of the community, to see how these areas evolve over time, and compare them to the areas where the resilience practices were implemented.
In the non-covenant areas of the park, an active management approach has been initiated to address identified vulnerabilities over time. These actions include controlling invasive plants, transitioning areas of forest dominated by American beech to a more diverse suite of climate adapted species and creating young forest to increase structural diversity across the landscape. Implementing a harvest focused on regeneration, climate resilience, and biodiversity was a key step to achieving these goals. This required the identification and implementation of several goals and supporting forestry actions, which are outlined in the Climate Smart Management Actions section, below.
Climate Smart Management Actions
The Town of Rowe, working with forestry partners, ecologists and other stakeholders, has begun implementing several “climate-smart” practices across Pelham Lake Park. The actions are “climate-smart” because they focus on mitigating climate change by balancing carbon sequestration and storage across the short and long term while adapting the forest to climate change by diversifying the composition and structure of the forest and meeting the needs of park users. The individual practices are described below starting with the more passive management end of the management spectrum and ending with those on the more active end of the spectrum.
Implement climate resilience harvest
The town, project stakeholders, and local partners agreed to conduct a small resilience harvest in the winter of 2025-26. The harvest consisted of two side-by-side 2-acre group selections with reserves, which strategically retained specific trees in an otherwise clear-cut patch. The trees that were retained are adapted to climate change and will promote a new generation of trees by acting as a seed source. The forest opening that was created will encourage the establishment of young trees and improve forest diversity by allowing sunlight to reach the forest floor. The anticipated outcome is a resurgence in regeneration of maple, birch, oak, and spruce; species that will thrive under changing climate conditions at this location.
This harvest activity also included an innovative strategy called a slash wall, a large wall of woody material designed to exclude deer and protect young trees. The wall will slowly biodegrade over time and will not need to be rebuilt or removed. A slash wall will help address the impact deer are having on our forest’s ability to adapt to climate change, while demonstrating innovative solutions to these challenges.
Enhance old growth areas
Old growth forests are characterized by being messy, complex forest areas with well-established natural processes and often large trees. While true old growth is rare in Massachusetts, sections of Pelham Lake Park exhibit these characteristics and are on their way to becoming old forest as they recover from past agricultural use. Using a passive (rather than an active) approach to forest management in the reserve areas of the park will allow them to naturally evolve towards old-growth conditions. To connect visitors to this landscape, an old growth interpretive trail was installed.
Monitor hemlock plots
Eastern hemlock is at risk of insect infestation. The hemlock wooly adelgid is a tiny insect that disrupts the flow of nutrients to twigs and needles by sucking sap from the tree, thereby killing it. Hemlock is not expected to do well at Pelham Lake Park in the future because of this pressure. Monitoring plots have been established in are four areas as located in stands 5 and 8, which are dominated by hemlock. The presence of HWA and overall tree health will be observed over time. These observations will help inform future management decisions to protect this tree species.
Protect and improve recreational infrastructure
Protecting recreational resources was a key goal for the project. In conjunction with forest stewardship planning, a trail assessment and mapping project was completed, and park staff have used this to prioritize trail improvement projects that address climate vulnerabilities. In addition, active management projects have been prioritized near existing trails where educational signage has been installed to amplify the recreational experience. In some cases, trails need to be temporarily closed to carry out active management, but these activities are also opportunities to repair, improve and/or preserve trail access.
Protect ash trees
White ash grows well in the climate of Pelham Lake Park, but as with other ash in the region, they are at risk of emerald ash borer (EAB) infestations, which kills the trees. One way to address this issue is to inoculate these trees with pesticides. In 2022, 10 trees were inoculated and a follow-up treatment was conducted in the spring of 2024 by Long View Forest. More trees may be protected in the future. Keeping a small population of mature ash on the landscape maintains the possibility of the population expanding as biocontrols for EAB become established at the landscape scale and potential genetic resistance develops.
Control invasive plants
Invasive plants can inhibit the regeneration of native trees and shrub species. Infestations of bittersweet, barberry, knotweed and multiflora rose are highly localized in pockets of the park. Removing these prevents their spread, fosters regeneration, protects biodiversity, and reduces future threats to ecological function.
Enrichment planting
A lack of regeneration reduces long-term resilience in a forest ecosystem. A healthy northern hardwood forest should have different age classes of trees, including young seedlings and saplings which could grow to maturity as older trees die. In many areas of Pelham Lake Park, beech sprouts are the dominant species in the understory. This is because beech dying from beech bark disease sprout prolifically and the buds and leaves are ignored by deer which preferentially browse of species like oaks and maples. To improve the diversity of tree seedlings in the forest understory and ultimately replace the hard mast being lost as beech declines, red and white oaks have been planted in the understory in five patches in the forest, ranging from half to one acre in size. Beech seedlings and saplings were first cut in these areas to reduce the competition for planted seedlings. One- to two-yead-old bareroot seedlings were then planted and protected with tree tubes to reduce damage from deer. In some patches, overstory diseased beech were girdled after seedling establishment to increase the amount of light available for seedling growth. Beech leaf disease is now impacting both understory and overstory beech in the park, increasing the need to establish young trees of more species in the forest understory.
The management work was enabled by an intentional and comprehensive project plan that incorporated voices from many stakeholders. This plan will evolve over time. To date, the majority of climate smart practices have been implemented. Park managers will continue to monitor and maintain this work and adapt management approaches in the future as the results of this work start to manifest on the landscape. As new vulnerabilities and opportunities arise, they will be able to adjust the plan and priorities to address them.
Project Timeline
Rowe’s Park Commission raised awareness of this work over the past couple years through several communications and outreach initiatives, as well as through partnership building with forestry experts and community organizations, including the Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts, Mass Audubon and Long View Forest.
The park manager and other project stakeholders will continue to monitor this work and adapt management approaches as the forest responds and new pressures are introduced. Over time, they will identify new, impactful opportunities to preserve Pelham Lake Park with long-term health and resilience in mind.
Andrew Randazzo
Forest Ecologist
Mass Audubon
arandazzo@massaudubon.org
413-252-9534
massaudubon.org/climateforestry
Special thanks to Rick Whitney of Mass Audubon, Emily Boss of Massachusetts Woodlands Institute, Alex Barrett of Longview Forest, Mary Wigmore of Wigmore Forest Resources, and the Rowe Park Commission for their help preparing this case study
Rowe
Pelham Lake Park
The land is in the town of Rowe, MA on unceded land of the Mohican, Wabanaki, and Nipmuc First Nations (Learn whose land you’re on)
The Town of Rowe
Municipal
Town of Rowe, Pelham Lake Park Commission, Park Manager, Rowe Selectboard, Foresters Alex Barrett and Mary Wigmore, Municipal Vulnerability Grant Program, Woodlands Partnership of Western Massachusetts, Mass Audubon, New England Forestry Foundation, Franklin Regional Council of Governments, No Loose Braids, Chagwas Cultural Consulting, Ohketeau Cultural Center
Forest reserves, old growth enhancement, eastern hemlock monitoring, resilience patch cuts, deer browse management, white ash inoculation, enrichment planting and assisted natural regeneration.
Forest protection, understory planting and monitoring, invasive and pest management, old growth forest enhancements, community educational programs, patch cut, slash wall
