Aging with Adventure with Eric Weld: Age of opportunity: Creating urban biodiversity one plot at a time

One cool thing about aging into later years (because we need all the aging upsides we can get!) and retiring from careers is the way these life progressions open up unexpected opportunities. New avenues for learning come into view. Forgotten corners of curiosity re-emerge. New ways to help people and improve the world present themselves.

One such opportunity has sidled into my life in the past year. I became president of a new nonprofit organization, the Massachusetts Urban Conservancy (MUC, pronounced like “muck”). After having retired from a career in public relations at Smith College and embarking on a modus operandi of adventuring around the world, the launch and leadership of MUC satisfyingly rounds my post-career endeavors. It’s a way to give back and make the world a better place that my fulltime working life didn’t exactly provide (other than raising kids). 

MUC is committed to restoring and building biodiversity and pollinator habitats on small urban pieces of land. It works like this: we solicit property owners who are sitting on unusable, unbuildable plots of land in cities and towns. Maybe they’re left over from a building or multifamily housing project, or sit on a slope or a wetland. For whatever reason, they can’t do anything with this property. But the owners pay taxes on it, possibly insure it for liability, and maybe maintain it or mow it year after year, with no benefit. 

We offer an opportunity to donate the land to MUC, clear it off their property tax rolls, write the land’s value off their tax burden, and save thousands of dollars every year. Meanwhile, we will protect the land from development, clear out invasive plants and trees, and eventually optimize the soil and plant native vegetation to create a permanent healthy ecosystem that invites pollinators and benefits the community in many surprising ways. 

We focus on urban areas because that’s where most people live, and we want to raise people’s awareness of biodiversity and the importance of pollinators and green space. Robust biodiversity is way more important than most people realize, for life on earth, food, medicine, raw materials for clothing, protection from disease, psychological benefits, and much more.

If you have or know of a piece of land that fits this profile, drop me an email. 

A good start

MUC has received two land donations so far, one in Springfield, a tract of 10residential lots in Indian Orchard; and another in Randolph, south of Boston, a small, narrow, overgrown plot in a residential neighborhood. Both parcels are located in Environmental Justice communities, and that’s important to us. EJ communities often suffer from relatively worse air quality, more respiratory disease, hotter temperatures due to less shade and greenery, and all sorts of downstream results like poorer economies and academic performance. All of which could be addressed by a little green space. 

MUC recently launched our first fundraiser on GoFundMe to raise capital for our biodiversity project in Randolph. Funds are needed for real estate attorney closing costs and insurance, buying tools and equipment for removing invasive plants, and eventually purchasing and planting native plants, plus some minor ongoing maintenance. 

We hope to build a network across Massachusetts of similar biodiversity projects, using these early greenspaces as models. Each individual project adds back to our biodiversity macrocosm. But if we can create a large network of green, healthy ecosystem, microhabitat spaces, we can make a substantial positive impact on air and water quality, protection from disease, plus mental, physical and economic health for everyone. Maybe one day we’ll collectively reverse our current loss of biodiversity.  

What is biodiversity?

Okay, I’ve referred to biodiversity several times. It’s not yet a household phrase, but it’s very much related to aging, nature and health. 

Biodiversity is a word that refers to all the species on earth, their symbioses, complementarity and mutual dependence. Robust species diversity reflects a healthy ecosystem in which a multitude of plants and animals, including humans, can thrive because they have food and resources. Without a diversity of plants and animals, pollinator populations begin to disappear, creating a cascade of extinctions. We are seeing this now, and in fact are amid a massive extinction event called the Holocene (or Sixth) Extinction. 

If we continue on our current path, we could lose 30% of all species by 2050, according to some estimates. The impact on human life, already showing up, will become enormous and eventually calamitous, even existentially threatening.  

What does this have to do with aging?

My late-career switch to building a nonprofit conservancy is tied in with aging and adventure on several levels. First of all, just launching and building a viable nonprofit organization is an adventure in itself. It’s fraught with challenge, risk, education and movement, my four adventure tenets. 

But a nonprofit conservancy makes sense for me in every way. MUC is about nature, preserving it and making it healthier. And my adventure life is all about spending time in nature. I long ago learned about the uncountable benefits of being in nature, and I share them every chance I get. 

So dedicating my time, energy and enthusiasm to improving natural habitats and ecosystems is part of my DNA. 

This endeavor also addresses aging. It’s about our aging earth and our aging species, and how these are connected. Humans have aged quickly in our technological sophistication. We continue to pick up the pace on how to harness the earth’s resources to make our lives more convenient, comfortable, interesting and fun. But we haven’t figured out how to balance our hunger for tech innovation with the earth’s fuels needed to feed it.

Now we are running out of fuel, in many facets. Nature is taking a hit. The development and energy voracity of artificial intelligence systems will kick this trend into overdrive. 

As I age through six decades and continue my adventure forays to some of our planet’s most inspiring locales, I feel an increasing pull to care for our natural world and habitats. I’m also a father of two, presumably with grandchildren arriving at some point (no pressure, kids), and as such feel an inherent responsibility to steward the earth’s natural resources and beauty for others to enjoy after I’m gone. 

This earth has provided for us quite well. But for humans to live here, there has to be a balance of give and take. For the moment, we’re out of balance. Helping to restore that balance is a fulfilling way to spend a share of my sexagenarian years. 

Eric Weld, a former Gazette reporter, is the founder of agingadventurist.com and president of the Massachusetts Urban Conservancy (MUC).