12 Reasons Mass Audubon Camps Rock

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Hillary T.

CampPicWhen you choose a summer camp for your child, we know there’s no shortage of options. We also know that as parents, you’re always looking to provide your kids with the best possible experiences.

Perhaps we’re a bit biased, but we think our camps are the bee’s knees, the snake’s hips, the kipper’s knickers, monkey’s eyebrows, oyster’s earrings* … you get the drift.

Just why do Mass Audubon summer camps rock? In brief:

  1. We’re everywhere! We currently have 17 American Camp Association-accredited day camps from the Cape to the Berkshires, plus Wildwood, our accredited overnight camp in Rindge, New Hampshire.
  2. Kids come home dirty, tired, happy, and hydrated every day they’re at camp.
  3. We’re flexible. Our camps typically offer 1- and 2-week sessions, plus before and after care, allowing our sessions to work with many summertime schedules.
  4. Our campers develop a bond with nature that lasts a lifetime.
  5. Kids build confidence, whether your child is safely completing a challenge course 30 feet up in the trees at Wildwood, learning to identify a red eft, or making new friends in new social situations.
  6. No two sessions are alike. Our camps have organized activities but leave plenty of room for personal exploration and group decisions.
  7. Kids sing, explore, dance, paint, get dirty, and discover that the world is literally at their fingertips.
  8. After camp, parents and families learn a great deal about nature from their very own family nature-guide.
  9. We give families the opportunity to partake in the fun with Family Camp at Wildwood.
  10. Kids flex their science, math, social studies, and language arts muscles without even realizing it.
  11. Did we mention that kids get dirty?
  12. Camps help Mass Audubon advance our mission at a local and statewide level to protect the nature of Massachusetts for future generations to enjoy.

Don’t just believe us, take it from a camper: “The most awesome camp anyone could ever go to. No offense other camps. Fun counselors, awesome games, cool nature.”

Are you a Mass Audubon camper or parent of a camper (past or present)? Tell us what one thing you learned or took away from your Mass Audubon camp experience.

Ready to sign up? Don’t delay as spaces are filling up.

* We just love all of the nonsensical wildlife inspired catchphrases used in the 1920s to indicate something excellent.

Centennial Milestone

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Hillary T.

Copyright Sandy SeleskyExcerpted from Sanctuary magazine

Beginning in March some of our best-known, most-loved migratory birds will arrive in Massachusetts as harbingers of spring. March is also the month when, 100 years ago, the Weeks-McLean Act, the precursor to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, passed—the first legislation in the nation to place migrants under federal jurisdiction and prohibit their killing without the permission of the US government.

The pre-spring arrivals that can move freely and safely from state to state thanks to such early 19th-century advocacy initiatives—sandy-colored piping plovers to beaches, winsome red-winged blackbirds to marshland, and melodious song sparrows to yards and open spaces—are just representative of the many species that still benefit from the efforts begun by pioneering conservationists.

“The Weeks-McLean Act was the primary legislation protecting native birds in the United States,” says Mass Audubon’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations Jack Clarke, “and one of the country’s earliest environmental laws.” Without these protections put into place at the outset of the 1900s, other avian species would undoubtedly have been subjected to the same fate as the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet, whose species no longer had representative wild individuals as of 1900 and 1904, respectively, leading ultimately to their extinction.

Mass Audubon was one the first players promoting legislation to save birds, so it was fitting that the Weeks-McLean Act had its origins in Massachusetts. In 1908, Charles H. Hudson, a farmer in Needham Heights, wrote to his Congressional representative, John Wingate Weeks, imploring him sponsor “a national law put on all kinds of birds in every State in the country, as the gunners are shooting our birds that Nature put here….”

Five years in the making, the 1913 bill, introduced by Representative John W. Weeks of Massachusetts and Senator George P. McLean of Connecticut—set the stage for bird national bird conservation on a scale that was necessary to change the path of history for the good of our priceless avian life.

Photo © Sandy Selesky