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The Mashpee Wampanoag Work With a Cape Cod Town to Restore Their Fishing Grounds

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

This is the second of two articles about the Mashpee Wampanoag’s efforts to assert their fishing rights on Cape Cod. Read the first story here. Vernon “Buddy” Pocknett steered his truck through the curving streets of Popponesset Island, Cape Cod, jostling a satchel that hung from the rearview mirror above a trucker hat reading “WTF (Where’s The Fish).” The satchel was made from a seal paw, adorned with long claws that jiggled as Pocknett took the turns, passing Teslas, sailboat-shaped mailboxes, and sunburned cyclists. Pocknett drove to Fishermen’s Landing at the members-only Popponesset Beach, stopping at a “beach security checkpoint” run by two teenagers who hid from the July sun under an oversized umbrella. One asked Pocknett if he was there to fish, and Pocknett said he was doing research. The teen sounded skeptical and asked what kind. Pocknett patted the sticker on his windshield emblazoned with the official Mashpee Wampanoag tribal seal. “Oh!” she said, sounding flustered. “You’re all set.” “You see what I mean?” Pocknett said, with the girl barely out of earshot. “How do they get to say who’s to come down here and who’s not?” Pocknett was at the beach to identify Indigenous water access points, paths used for generations to reach fishing grounds from shores that are now mostly privatized by non-Wampanoags. Public access points along Massachusetts waters have thinned since the mid-20th century, but their disappearance has been especially pronounced here, in and around the town of Mashpee and the Popponessett Bay, in what was once Wampanoag territory. Meanwhile, overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival. A lifelong aquaculturist and fisherman, Pocknett has recently begun work to restore access to traditional fishing grounds and the ecosystem that supports them. Fishermen’s Landing at Popponesset Beach, near New Seabury, Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes) With help from the tribe’s Natural Resources Department, the town of Mashpee is compiling a harbor management plan, an extensive document that will set guidelines for the construction of marinas and docks. The plan will also address encroaching erosion and sea-level rise throughout this Massachusetts municipality. As part of the project, the town has invited Pocknett and a group of tribal elders to identify Indigenous pathways to the water, with the goal of eventually opening some of them back up for public use. It is a modest effort, a starting point to repair fraught relations, reconcile with the past, and strategize for the future. If the plan succeeds, it will help rebuild wetlands and traditional food sources for the tribe, once largely excluded from environmental decision-making. At Fishermen’s Landing, Pocknett leaned against a freshly painted railing and looked out at Nantucket Sound. Sunbathers floated and dozed below, on a beach where Pocknett grew up fishing, back when it was still a hotspot for striped bass, or stripers. But as in other parts of the bay, the fish have been driven out of these spawning grounds. Since the arrival of European settlers 400 years ago, not a single season has passed without humans harvesting as much as possible from waters that are now increasingly fouled with pollution. “It’s like they don’t see the impact [on] their great-great-grandchildren,” Pocknett said. “What’s going to happen, four generations from us right here? When’s it end?” A Plan for the Harbor The harbor management plan is, among other things, an attempt to ensure generations of sustainable fishing and clean water in Mashpee. The town’s Harbor Management Committee, with support from the Urban Harbors Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is compiling its second draft of hundreds of pages detailing everything from dock compliance to potential new aquaculture sites, which can help improve water quality over time. Once the final plan is approved by the town, it could open the door to state or federal funding to contend with existential threats like sea-level rise and a shifting coastline. But finalizing the plan has been a slow process. Overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival. “It’s a pretty encompassing project, hence why it’s going to take a bit of time,” said Christopher Avis, the town’s shellfish constable. (Each Cape Cod town has a shellfish constable, who enforces shellfish bylaws and oversees aquaculture projects.) “We want to say, okay, here we are today. What do we do tomorrow? And in 10 years, as things change, how do we not only change with them but also kind of be ahead of the curve?” Avis and other members of Mashpee’s Natural Resources Department are actively working to mend their relationship with the Wampanoag, acknowledging that the stewardship of local waterways is a joint effort. In the past, the two sides have clashed over the tribe’s fishing practices, but increased advocacy from Wampanoags has helped shift the town’s official stance on the “Aboriginal right to fish” from what are now private access points. The harbor management plan represents a chance for the tribe to continue this advocacy in a more formal capacity. Under the direction of Ashley Fisher—the head of Mashpee Natural Resources until last month, when she was reassigned to the wastewater department—the harbor management plan has served as a sort of olive-branch offering to the tribe, a solicitation for Wampanoag knowledge that can help address the many resource management crises afflicting the town. To underscore their intentions, the Mashpee Natural Resources Department also plans to include a section clearly outlining Aboriginal rights as they pertain to hunting and fishing, rights that give Wampanoags the option to ignore the “private property” signs that decorate the densely populated wetlands of Popponesset Island and New Seabury. Despite this greater institutional recognition of those rights, water access points have become so impractical—overgrown, gated off, or built up—and the fish so few that only a small group of Wampanoags regularly use them today. On Daniels Island, a giant rock obstructs access to the beach (left). At right, an example of a privatized water access point in the resort community of New Seabury. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes) The slow-moving harbor plan is just the beginning of a long reconciliation process that may or may not come. During the early stages of the plan, in February 2023, Fisher told Civil Eats she felt strongly that the opening of access points would be a good-faith gesture to restore trust between Wampanoags and the town—though not without significant hurdles. “It’s going to be a tough sell,” she said. “There’s going to be some angry people, because our waterfront is landlocked.” Her ambition to partner with the tribe on the harbor plan has at least materialized, though. Pocknett said he and some other tribal “old-timers” met with Fisher this summer to identify access points on a map from their personal memories of “how it was.” There were maybe three or four existing access points acknowledged by the town, but the group was able to identify close to 100 more along the Popponesset and Waquoit bays. Fisher worried that memories and hearsay wouldn’t be enough to reopen the access points, so she asked the tribe’s natural resource team to search their archives for documentation demonstrating that the areas had been used as “historic passage” for multiple generations. While the team continues its hunt for that documentation, consultants at the Urban Harbors Institute are working to revise the first draft of the plan after an extensive public comment period this past spring and summer. Avis said his team has “sort of formed a partnership” with the tribe and its aquaculturists, including Pocknett. “If they need something, they call us. If we need something, we’ll call them. It’s been a tremendous relationship with those guys as to utilizing their resources and our resources to pool together to get as many animals in the water to help clean the water,” he said. Traditional Knowledge Will Shape the Future Pocknett and his younger cousin, CheeNulKa Pocknett, know about using bivalves to mitigate nitrogen pollution. The two manage First Light Shellfish Farm, the tribe’s aquacultural operation on Popponesset Bay, which the elder Pocknett’s father founded in 1977. Since the 1970s, development on the Cape has exceeded the ecosystem’s capacity to support it, made worse by a lack of central sewage systems and wastewater treatment facilities. From Provincetown to Barnstable, untreated wastewater from homes, hotels, restaurants, and golf courses leaches into bays, lakes, and rivers. Joshua Reitsma, a marine chemist at the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, says this effluent is responsible for 80 percent of the Cape’s “nutrient pollution,” leading to algal blooms that blanket the surface in summer and fall to the bottom in winter. The algae smothers keystone species like eelgrass, and coats the sand in muck that can’t support the oysters, quahogs, and soft-shelled clams that would naturally grow there. Quahog (littleneck) clams freshly caught off Cape Cod. (Photo credit: John Piekos/Getty Images) The tribe has always protected and cultivated species like oysters and quahogs, in part because of their role in filtering Mashpee’s waterways. By eating nitrogen-rich phytoplankton and incorporating the protein into their tissues, the bivalves maintain the stasis of their aquatic home. First Light farm is the tribe’s attempt to rehabilitate Popponesset Bay in an era of unprecedented wreckage. (The town of Mashpee runs its own separate aquaculture projects, which have anchored its water-quality strategy for decades.) But no amount of shellfish alone can revive waterways strangled by such heavy pollution. At one of the town’s recent Shellfish Commission meetings, aquaculturist and chair Peter Thomas likened the lopsided reliance on shellfish to “putting a Band-Aid on someone who needs to be med-flighted.” For years, tribal leaders and environmental advocates have raised similar warnings about the quality of Mashpee’s watersheds. For the Pocknetts, this pollution is personal. The 16th-century settlers who claimed the shores of present-day New England were met by people with a vibrant social order, language, and trade network, shaped by the surrounding natural world. Clan identities are just one example: CheeNulKa’s family is part of the wolf clan. There are no wild wolves left in Massachusetts. The eel clan, too, got its name in honor of once-thriving animal relatives. “Without the eels, you can’t have the eel clan,” CheeNulKa said. “Without the eel clan, you can’t have an eel dance. That’s how you lose that culture. It’s something as small or as monumental as this, depending on how you look at it.” “Without the eels, you can’t have the eel clan. Without the eel clan, you can’t have an eel dance. That’s how you lose that culture.” As Indigenous concerns are increasingly heeded, change is creeping in. The town recently broke ground on a wastewater treatment plan to introduce centralized sewering for the first time, part of a Cape-wide effort that will take roughly 30 years to fully implement. The first phase, which involved the $54 million construction of a wastewater collection system and treatment facility, is underway. The second phase, which would begin in spring 2025 at the earliest, is earmarked for $96 million, according to Cape News. Over time, the two phases are expected to reduce nitrogen levels in the Popponesset Bay by 42 percent. Indigenous environmental expertise and traditional ecological knowledge are also getting overdue recognition in Mashpee’s Conservation Commission, which oversees wetland building permits and other environmental conservation projects. The commission recently proposed a plan for the town and tribe to co-steward conservation land, a partnership that Wampanoag Chief Earl Mills, Sr., has said would be a “win-win.” These efforts reflect a pattern emerging worldwide. At the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Indigenous delegates lobbied successfully for a plan that honors the rights of Indigenous peoples, who make up less than six percent of the world’s population but protect nearly 80 percent of its biodiversity. In an unprecedented expression of partnership, President Joe Biden’s cabinet, including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna), proposed that dozens of tribes co-steward ancestral lands from Virginia to Idaho, working alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And in November this year, in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island, Brown University confirmed the transfer of 255 acres to the Pokanoket tribe to “ensure appropriate stewardship and management of this unique, historical, sacred, and natural resource for generations to come.” Generations of Knowledge  From the rocky shores of the Waquoit to the pale sand of the Popponesset, Mashpee holds generations of Pocknett family memories. But the Pocknetts have watched the town and its shorelines disappear, parcel by parcel, into the lawns and patios of the highest bidders. A private-property sign near Spohr’s Beach on Monomoscoy Island, Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes) Each privately developed access point contributes to the water’s decline. Re-opening whatever is outlined in the harbor management plan won’t heal the waters or bring back the fish. But it would send a message from Mashpee—a municipality that proudly proclaims “Wampanoag land” on signs on its town line—that its Indigenous residents are vital to the success of its ecosystems. In July, Buddy Pocknett lumbered down a footpath on Mashpee’s Monomoscoy Island, past a flurry of metal signs that declared, “Spohr’s Private Beach.” His scraggly gray ponytail grazed the neckline of his T-shirt, above the words “Aboriginal Rights” printed in blue script. He shuffled by a big house and a couple of canoes drying in the shade of the leaning pitch pines, toward an old quahog-digging spot that has gone from public to private in his lifetime. He planted his sturdy brown boots on the sand. The new wave of interest in tribal knowledge makes him cautiously optimistic, he said. But the town has just scratched the surface of collaboration. Moving forward, Pocknett wants Wampanoags to be consulted before the approval of any new developments. “For years, the tribe has been kind of sleeping and not going to these meetings,” he said. “[Townspeople] have been kind of pulling the wool over our face for a long time, just doing whatever they want.” With more Indigenous representation at town meetings and in big projects like the harbor plan, Pocknett predicted more checks on overbuilding, more strategic and effective resource management, and better environmental advocacy across the board. With more Indigenous representation at town meetings and in big projects like the harbor plan, Pocknett predicted more checks on overbuilding, more strategic and effective resource management, and better environmental advocacy across the board. After all, non-Indigenous control of Mashpee is very new, compared with the 12,000 years that the Wampanoags managed the land. Within Pocknett’s father’s lifetime, the tribe had much more say in resource management. One particularly prominent steward was Pocknett’s grandfather, Will, who kept a fishing camp on the edge of the scrubby woods near Waquoit Bay. Will was a respected fisherman, whose knowledge of the bay was widely trusted. At that time, in the mid-20th century, Mashpee was still considered a Wampanoag town. Every bay and fishing ground was run by a tribal member, Pocknett said—someone familiar with its particular quirks, like Will was with Waquoit Bay. “If you went fishing in Waquoit Bay when my grandfather was alive, you asked him and he would tell you where to go,” he said. “It wasn’t just ‘go fishing.’ Each tribal member had a bay. And they would say, ‘There’s more over here today, come fish over here.’ It was equally important to Indian people to recognize the areas that had less fish and leave them alone.” But even with his influence, Will never claimed to own the bay or the surrounding area, Pocknett said, eyeing the metal signs that stuck out of the reeds and laid claim to the beach beneath his feet. He smiled and said, “Because no one can own the land.” The post The Mashpee Wampanoag Work With a Cape Cod Town to Restore Their Fishing Grounds appeared first on Civil Eats.

This is the second of two articles about the Mashpee Wampanoag’s efforts to assert their fishing rights on Cape Cod. Read the first story here. Pocknett drove to Fishermen’s Landing at the members-only Popponesset Beach, stopping at a “beach security checkpoint” run by two teenagers who hid from the July sun under an oversized umbrella. One […] The post The Mashpee Wampanoag Work With a Cape Cod Town to Restore Their Fishing Grounds appeared first on Civil Eats.

This is the second of two articles about the Mashpee Wampanoag’s efforts to assert their fishing rights on Cape Cod. Read the first story here.

Vernon “Buddy” Pocknett steered his truck through the curving streets of Popponesset Island, Cape Cod, jostling a satchel that hung from the rearview mirror above a trucker hat reading “WTF (Where’s The Fish).” The satchel was made from a seal paw, adorned with long claws that jiggled as Pocknett took the turns, passing Teslas, sailboat-shaped mailboxes, and sunburned cyclists.

Pocknett drove to Fishermen’s Landing at the members-only Popponesset Beach, stopping at a “beach security checkpoint” run by two teenagers who hid from the July sun under an oversized umbrella. One asked Pocknett if he was there to fish, and Pocknett said he was doing research. The teen sounded skeptical and asked what kind. Pocknett patted the sticker on his windshield emblazoned with the official Mashpee Wampanoag tribal seal.

“Oh!” she said, sounding flustered. “You’re all set.”

“You see what I mean?” Pocknett said, with the girl barely out of earshot. “How do they get to say who’s to come down here and who’s not?”

Pocknett was at the beach to identify Indigenous water access points, paths used for generations to reach fishing grounds from shores that are now mostly privatized by non-Wampanoags. Public access points along Massachusetts waters have thinned since the mid-20th century, but their disappearance has been especially pronounced here, in and around the town of Mashpee and the Popponessett Bay, in what was once Wampanoag territory.

Meanwhile, overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival. A lifelong aquaculturist and fisherman, Pocknett has recently begun work to restore access to traditional fishing grounds and the ecosystem that supports them.

a serene, small beach in a bay on a sunny day. sunbathers can be see in the background

Fishermen’s Landing at Popponesset Beach, near New Seabury, Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes)

With help from the tribe’s Natural Resources Department, the town of Mashpee is compiling a harbor management plan, an extensive document that will set guidelines for the construction of marinas and docks. The plan will also address encroaching erosion and sea-level rise throughout this Massachusetts municipality. As part of the project, the town has invited Pocknett and a group of tribal elders to identify Indigenous pathways to the water, with the goal of eventually opening some of them back up for public use. It is a modest effort, a starting point to repair fraught relations, reconcile with the past, and strategize for the future. If the plan succeeds, it will help rebuild wetlands and traditional food sources for the tribe, once largely excluded from environmental decision-making.

At Fishermen’s Landing, Pocknett leaned against a freshly painted railing and looked out at Nantucket Sound. Sunbathers floated and dozed below, on a beach where Pocknett grew up fishing, back when it was still a hotspot for striped bass, or stripers. But as in other parts of the bay, the fish have been driven out of these spawning grounds. Since the arrival of European settlers 400 years ago, not a single season has passed without humans harvesting as much as possible from waters that are now increasingly fouled with pollution.

“It’s like they don’t see the impact [on] their great-great-grandchildren,” Pocknett said. “What’s going to happen, four generations from us right here? When’s it end?”

A Plan for the Harbor

The harbor management plan is, among other things, an attempt to ensure generations of sustainable fishing and clean water in Mashpee. The town’s Harbor Management Committee, with support from the Urban Harbors Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is compiling its second draft of hundreds of pages detailing everything from dock compliance to potential new aquaculture sites, which can help improve water quality over time. Once the final plan is approved by the town, it could open the door to state or federal funding to contend with existential threats like sea-level rise and a shifting coastline. But finalizing the plan has been a slow process.

Overdevelopment has destroyed abundant wetland areas that shaped Wampanoag life for thousands of years, and water pollution threatens many aquatic species essential to the tribe’s survival.

“It’s a pretty encompassing project, hence why it’s going to take a bit of time,” said Christopher Avis, the town’s shellfish constable. (Each Cape Cod town has a shellfish constable, who enforces shellfish bylaws and oversees aquaculture projects.) “We want to say, okay, here we are today. What do we do tomorrow? And in 10 years, as things change, how do we not only change with them but also kind of be ahead of the curve?”

Avis and other members of Mashpee’s Natural Resources Department are actively working to mend their relationship with the Wampanoag, acknowledging that the stewardship of local waterways is a joint effort. In the past, the two sides have clashed over the tribe’s fishing practices, but increased advocacy from Wampanoags has helped shift the town’s official stance on the “Aboriginal right to fish” from what are now private access points. The harbor management plan represents a chance for the tribe to continue this advocacy in a more formal capacity.

Under the direction of Ashley Fisher—the head of Mashpee Natural Resources until last month, when she was reassigned to the wastewater department—the harbor management plan has served as a sort of olive-branch offering to the tribe, a solicitation for Wampanoag knowledge that can help address the many resource management crises afflicting the town.

To underscore their intentions, the Mashpee Natural Resources Department also plans to include a section clearly outlining Aboriginal rights as they pertain to hunting and fishing, rights that give Wampanoags the option to ignore the “private property” signs that decorate the densely populated wetlands of Popponesset Island and New Seabury. Despite this greater institutional recognition of those rights, water access points have become so impractical—overgrown, gated off, or built up—and the fish so few that only a small group of Wampanoags regularly use them today.

A giant rock blocks beach access gatesA shaded walkway that's a driveway near private property.

On Daniels Island, a giant rock obstructs access to the beach (left). At right, an example of a privatized water access point in the resort community of New Seabury. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes)

The slow-moving harbor plan is just the beginning of a long reconciliation process that may or may not come. During the early stages of the plan, in February 2023, Fisher told Civil Eats she felt strongly that the opening of access points would be a good-faith gesture to restore trust between Wampanoags and the town—though not without significant hurdles. “It’s going to be a tough sell,” she said. “There’s going to be some angry people, because our waterfront is landlocked.”

Her ambition to partner with the tribe on the harbor plan has at least materialized, though. Pocknett said he and some other tribal “old-timers” met with Fisher this summer to identify access points on a map from their personal memories of “how it was.” There were maybe three or four existing access points acknowledged by the town, but the group was able to identify close to 100 more along the Popponesset and Waquoit bays.

Fisher worried that memories and hearsay wouldn’t be enough to reopen the access points, so she asked the tribe’s natural resource team to search their archives for documentation demonstrating that the areas had been used as “historic passage” for multiple generations. While the team continues its hunt for that documentation, consultants at the Urban Harbors Institute are working to revise the first draft of the plan after an extensive public comment period this past spring and summer.

Avis said his team has “sort of formed a partnership” with the tribe and its aquaculturists, including Pocknett. “If they need something, they call us. If we need something, we’ll call them. It’s been a tremendous relationship with those guys as to utilizing their resources and our resources to pool together to get as many animals in the water to help clean the water,” he said.

Traditional Knowledge Will Shape the Future

Pocknett and his younger cousin, CheeNulKa Pocknett, know about using bivalves to mitigate nitrogen pollution. The two manage First Light Shellfish Farm, the tribe’s aquacultural operation on Popponesset Bay, which the elder Pocknett’s father founded in 1977. Since the 1970s, development on the Cape has exceeded the ecosystem’s capacity to support it, made worse by a lack of central sewage systems and wastewater treatment facilities. From Provincetown to Barnstable, untreated wastewater from homes, hotels, restaurants, and golf courses leaches into bays, lakes, and rivers.

Joshua Reitsma, a marine chemist at the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, says this effluent is responsible for 80 percent of the Cape’s “nutrient pollution,” leading to algal blooms that blanket the surface in summer and fall to the bottom in winter. The algae smothers keystone species like eelgrass, and coats the sand in muck that can’t support the oysters, quahogs, and soft-shelled clams that would naturally grow there.

Quahog, or little neck, clams. (Photo credit: John Piekos/Getty Images)

Quahog (littleneck) clams freshly caught off Cape Cod. (Photo credit: John Piekos/Getty Images)

The tribe has always protected and cultivated species like oysters and quahogs, in part because of their role in filtering Mashpee’s waterways. By eating nitrogen-rich phytoplankton and incorporating the protein into their tissues, the bivalves maintain the stasis of their aquatic home. First Light farm is the tribe’s attempt to rehabilitate Popponesset Bay in an era of unprecedented wreckage. (The town of Mashpee runs its own separate aquaculture projects, which have anchored its water-quality strategy for decades.)

But no amount of shellfish alone can revive waterways strangled by such heavy pollution. At one of the town’s recent Shellfish Commission meetings, aquaculturist and chair Peter Thomas likened the lopsided reliance on shellfish to “putting a Band-Aid on someone who needs to be med-flighted.” For years, tribal leaders and environmental advocates have raised similar warnings about the quality of Mashpee’s watersheds.

For the Pocknetts, this pollution is personal. The 16th-century settlers who claimed the shores of present-day New England were met by people with a vibrant social order, language, and trade network, shaped by the surrounding natural world. Clan identities are just one example: CheeNulKa’s family is part of the wolf clan. There are no wild wolves left in Massachusetts. The eel clan, too, got its name in honor of once-thriving animal relatives.

“Without the eels, you can’t have the eel clan,” CheeNulKa said. “Without the eel clan, you can’t have an eel dance. That’s how you lose that culture. It’s something as small or as monumental as this, depending on how you look at it.”

“Without the eels, you can’t have the eel clan. Without the eel clan, you can’t have an eel dance. That’s how you lose that culture.”

As Indigenous concerns are increasingly heeded, change is creeping in. The town recently broke ground on a wastewater treatment plan to introduce centralized sewering for the first time, part of a Cape-wide effort that will take roughly 30 years to fully implement. The first phase, which involved the $54 million construction of a wastewater collection system and treatment facility, is underway. The second phase, which would begin in spring 2025 at the earliest, is earmarked for $96 million, according to Cape News. Over time, the two phases are expected to reduce nitrogen levels in the Popponesset Bay by 42 percent.

Indigenous environmental expertise and traditional ecological knowledge are also getting overdue recognition in Mashpee’s Conservation Commission, which oversees wetland building permits and other environmental conservation projects. The commission recently proposed a plan for the town and tribe to co-steward conservation land, a partnership that Wampanoag Chief Earl Mills, Sr., has said would be a “win-win.”

These efforts reflect a pattern emerging worldwide. At the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Indigenous delegates lobbied successfully for a plan that honors the rights of Indigenous peoples, who make up less than six percent of the world’s population but protect nearly 80 percent of its biodiversity.

In an unprecedented expression of partnership, President Joe Biden’s cabinet, including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna), proposed that dozens of tribes co-steward ancestral lands from Virginia to Idaho, working alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And in November this year, in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island, Brown University confirmed the transfer of 255 acres to the Pokanoket tribe to “ensure appropriate stewardship and management of this unique, historical, sacred, and natural resource for generations to come.”

Generations of Knowledge 

From the rocky shores of the Waquoit to the pale sand of the Popponesset, Mashpee holds generations of Pocknett family memories. But the Pocknetts have watched the town and its shorelines disappear, parcel by parcel, into the lawns and patios of the highest bidders.

Spohr's private beach sign on a green sign in with trees in the background

A private-property sign near Spohr’s Beach on Monomoscoy Island, Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Emma Glassman-Hughes)

Each privately developed access point contributes to the water’s decline. Re-opening whatever is outlined in the harbor management plan won’t heal the waters or bring back the fish. But it would send a message from Mashpee—a municipality that proudly proclaims “Wampanoag land” on signs on its town line—that its Indigenous residents are vital to the success of its ecosystems.

In July, Buddy Pocknett lumbered down a footpath on Mashpee’s Monomoscoy Island, past a flurry of metal signs that declared, “Spohr’s Private Beach.” His scraggly gray ponytail grazed the neckline of his T-shirt, above the words “Aboriginal Rights” printed in blue script.

He shuffled by a big house and a couple of canoes drying in the shade of the leaning pitch pines, toward an old quahog-digging spot that has gone from public to private in his lifetime. He planted his sturdy brown boots on the sand. The new wave of interest in tribal knowledge makes him cautiously optimistic, he said. But the town has just scratched the surface of collaboration. Moving forward, Pocknett wants Wampanoags to be consulted before the approval of any new developments.

“For years, the tribe has been kind of sleeping and not going to these meetings,” he said. “[Townspeople] have been kind of pulling the wool over our face for a long time, just doing whatever they want.”

With more Indigenous representation at town meetings and in big projects like the harbor plan, Pocknett predicted more checks on overbuilding, more strategic and effective resource management, and better environmental advocacy across the board.

With more Indigenous representation at town meetings and in big projects like the harbor plan, Pocknett predicted more checks on overbuilding, more strategic and effective resource management, and better environmental advocacy across the board.

After all, non-Indigenous control of Mashpee is very new, compared with the 12,000 years that the Wampanoags managed the land. Within Pocknett’s father’s lifetime, the tribe had much more say in resource management. One particularly prominent steward was Pocknett’s grandfather, Will, who kept a fishing camp on the edge of the scrubby woods near Waquoit Bay.

Will was a respected fisherman, whose knowledge of the bay was widely trusted. At that time, in the mid-20th century, Mashpee was still considered a Wampanoag town. Every bay and fishing ground was run by a tribal member, Pocknett said—someone familiar with its particular quirks, like Will was with Waquoit Bay.

“If you went fishing in Waquoit Bay when my grandfather was alive, you asked him and he would tell you where to go,” he said. “It wasn’t just ‘go fishing.’ Each tribal member had a bay. And they would say, ‘There’s more over here today, come fish over here.’ It was equally important to Indian people to recognize the areas that had less fish and leave them alone.”

But even with his influence, Will never claimed to own the bay or the surrounding area, Pocknett said, eyeing the metal signs that stuck out of the reeds and laid claim to the beach beneath his feet. He smiled and said, “Because no one can own the land.”

The post The Mashpee Wampanoag Work With a Cape Cod Town to Restore Their Fishing Grounds appeared first on Civil Eats.

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Lifesize herd of puppet animals begins climate action journey from Africa to Arctic Circle

The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the worldHundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.It is the second major project from The Walk Productions, which introduced Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet, to the world in Gaziantep, near the Turkey-Syria border, in 2021. The award-winning project, co-founded by the Palestinian playwright and director Amir Nizar Zuabi, reached 2 million people in 17 countries as she travelled from Turkey to the UK.The Herds’ journey began in Kinshasa’s Botanical Gardens on 10 April, kicking off four days of events. It moved on to Lagos, Nigeria, the following week, where up to 5,000 people attended events performed by more than 60 puppeteers.On Friday the streets of Dakar in Senegal will be filled with more than 40 puppet zebras, wildebeest, monkeys, giraffes and baboons as they run through Médina, one of the busiest neighbourhoods, where they will encounter a creation by Fabrice Monteiro, a Belgium-born artist who lives in Senegal, and is known for his large-scale sculptures. On Saturday the puppets will be part of an event in the fishing village of Ngor.The Herds’ 20,000km journey began in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photograph: Berclaire/walk productionsThe first set of animal puppets was created by Ukwanda Puppetry and Designs Art Collective in Cape Town using recycled materials, but in each location local volunteers are taught how to make their own animals using prototypes provided by Ukwanda. The project has already attracted huge interest from people keen to get involved. In Dakar more than 300 artists applied for 80 roles as artists and puppet guides. About 2,000 people will be trained to make the puppets over the duration of the project.“The idea is that we’re migrating with an ever-evolving, growing group of animals,” Zuabi told the Guardian last year.Zuabi has spoken of The Herds as a continuation of Little Amal’s journey, which was inspired by refugees, who often cite climate disaster as a trigger for forced migration. The Herds will put the environmental emergency centre stage, and will encourage communities to launch their own events to discuss the significance of the project and get involved in climate activism.The puppets are created with recycled materials and local volunteers are taught how to make them in each location. Photograph: Ant Strack“The idea is to put in front of people that there is an emergency – not with scientific facts, but with emotions,” said The Herds’ Senegal producer, Sarah Desbois.She expects thousands of people to view the four events being staged over the weekend. “We don’t have a tradition of puppetry in Senegal. As soon as the project started, when people were shown pictures of the puppets, they were going crazy.”Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian girl that has become a symbol of human rights, in Santiago, Chile on 3 January. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesGrowing as it moves, The Herds will make its way from Dakar to Morocco, then into Europe, including London and Paris, arriving in the Arctic Circle in early August.

Dead, sick pelicans turning up along Oregon coast

So far, no signs of bird flu but wildlife officials continue to test the birds.

Sick and dead pelicans are turning up on Oregon’s coast and state wildlife officials say they don’t yet know why. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says it has collected several dead brown pelican carcasses for testing. Lab results from two pelicans found in Newport have come back negative for highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu, the agency said. Avian influenza was detected in Oregon last fall and earlier this year in both domestic animals and wildlife – but not brown pelicans. Additional test results are pending to determine if another disease or domoic acid toxicity caused by harmful algal blooms may be involved, officials said. In recent months, domoic acid toxicity has sickened or killed dozens of brown pelicans and numerous other wildlife in California. The sport harvest for razor clams is currently closed in Oregon – from Cascade Head to the California border – due to high levels of domoic acid detected last fall.Brown pelicans – easily recognized by their large size, massive bill and brownish plumage – breed in Southern California and migrate north along the Oregon coast in spring. Younger birds sometimes rest on the journey and may just be tired, not sick, officials said. If you find a sick, resting or dead pelican, leave it alone and keep dogs leashed and away from wildlife. State wildlife biologists along the coast are aware of the situation and the public doesn’t need to report sick, resting or dead pelicans. — Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.

50-Million-Year-Old Footprints Open a 'Rare Window' Into the Behaviors of Extinct Animals That Once Roamed in Oregon

Scientists revisited tracks made by a shorebird, a lizard, a cat-like predator and some sort of large herbivore at what is now John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

50-Million-Year-Old Footprints Open a ‘Rare Window’ Into the Behaviors of Extinct Animals That Once Roamed in Oregon Scientists revisited tracks made by a shorebird, a lizard, a cat-like predator and some sort of large herbivore at what is now John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent April 24, 2025 4:59 p.m. Researchers took a closer look at fossilized footprints—including these cat-like tracks—found at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon. National Park Service Between 29 million and 50 million years ago, Oregon was teeming with life. Shorebirds searched for food in shallow water, lizards dashed along lake beds and saber-toothed predators prowled the landscape. Now, scientists are learning more about these prehistoric creatures by studying their fossilized footprints. They describe some of these tracks, discovered at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, in a paper published earlier this year in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is a nearly 14,000-acre, federally protected area in central and eastern Oregon. It’s a well-known site for “body fossils,” like teeth and bones. But, more recently, paleontologists have been focusing their attention on “trace fossils”—indirect evidence of animals, like worm burrows, footprints, beak marks and impressions of claws. Both are useful for understanding the extinct creatures that once roamed the environment, though they provide different kinds of information about the past. “Body fossils tell us a lot about the structure of an organism, but a trace fossil … tells us a lot about behaviors,” says lead author Conner Bennett, an Earth and environmental scientist at Utah Tech University, to Crystal Ligori, host of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “All Things Considered.” Oregon's prehistoric shorebirds probed for food the same way modern shorebirds do, according to the researchers. Bennett et al., Palaeontologia Electronica, 2025 For the study, scientists revisited fossilized footprints discovered at the national monument decades ago. Some specimens had sat in museum storage since the 1980s. They analyzed the tracks using a technique known as photogrammetry, which involved taking thousands of photographs to produce 3D models. These models allowed researchers to piece together some long-gone scenes. Small footprints and beak marks were discovered near invertebrate trails, suggesting that ancient shorebirds were pecking around in search of a meal between 39 million and 50 million years ago. This prehistoric behavior is “strikingly similar” to that of today’s shorebirds, according to a statement from the National Park Service. “It’s fascinating,” says Bennett in the statement. “That is an incredibly long time for a species to exhibit the same foraging patterns as its ancestors.” Photogrammetry techniques allowed the researchers to make 3D models of the tracks. Bennett et al., Palaeontologia Electronica, 2025 Researchers also analyzed a footprint with splayed toes and claws. This rare fossil was likely made by a running lizard around 50 million years ago, according to the team. It’s one of the few known reptile tracks in North America from that period. An illustration of a nimravid, an extinct, cat-like predator NPS / Mural by Roger Witter They also found evidence of a cat-like predator dating to roughly 29 million years ago. A set of paw prints, discovered in a layer of volcanic ash, likely belonged to a bobcat-sized, saber-toothed predator resembling a cat—possibly a nimravid of the genus Hoplophoneus. Since researchers didn’t find any claw marks on the paw prints, they suspect the creature had retractable claws, just like modern cats do. A set of three-toed, rounded hoofprints indicate some sort of large herbivore was roaming around 29 million years ago, probably an ancient tapir or rhinoceros ancestor. Together, the fossil tracks open “a rare window into ancient ecosystems,” says study co-author Nicholas Famoso, paleontology program manager at the national monument, in the statement. “They add behavioral context to the body fossils we’ve collected over the years and help us better understand the climate and environmental conditions of prehistoric Oregon,” he adds. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic petsPoaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.The cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks. Continue reading...

Poaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.The samples of garden ants presented to the court. Photograph: Monicah Mwangi/ReutersThe cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks.“We did not come here to break any laws. By accident and stupidity we did,” says Lornoy David, one of the Belgian smugglers.David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, pleaded guilty after being charged last week with wildlife piracy, alongside two other men in a separate case who were caught smuggling 400 ants. The cases have shed new light on booming global ant trade – and what authorities say is a growing trend of trafficking “less conspicuous” creatures.These crimes represent “a shift in trafficking trends – from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species”, says a KWS statement.The unusual case has also trained a spotlight on the niche world of ant-keeping and collecting – a hobby that has boomed over the past decade. The seized species include Messor cephalotes, a large red harvester ant native to east Africa. Queens of the species grow to about 20-24mm long, and the ant sales website Ants R Us describes them as “many people’s dream species”, selling them for £99 per colony. The ants are prized by collectors for their unique behaviours and complex colony-building skills, “traits that make them popular in exotic pet circles, where they are kept in specialised habitats known as formicariums”, KWS says.Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx during the hearing. Photograph: Monicah Mwangi/ReutersOne online ant vendor, who asked not to be named, says the market is thriving, and there has been a growth in ant-keeping shows, where enthusiasts meet to compare housing and species details. “Sales volumes have grown almost every year. There are more ant vendors than before, and prices have become more competitive,” he says. “In today’s world, where most people live fast-paced, tech-driven lives, many are disconnected from themselves and their environment. Watching ants in a formicarium can be surprisingly therapeutic,” he says.David and Lodewijckx will remain in custody until the court considers a pre-sentencing report on 23 April. The ant seller says theirs is a “landmark case in the field”. “People travelling to other countries specifically to collect ants and then returning with them is virtually unheard of,” he says.A formicarium at a pet shop in Singapore. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty ImagesScientists have raised concerns that the burgeoning trade in exotic ants could pose a significant biodiversity risk. “Ants are traded as pets across the globe, but if introduced outside of their native ranges they could become invasive with dire environmental and economic consequences,” researchers conclude in a 2023 paper tracking the ant trade across China. “The most sought-after ants have higher invasive potential,” they write.Removing ants from their ecosystems could also be damaging. Illegal exportation “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economic benefits”, says KWS. Dino Martins, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist in Kenya, says harvester ants are among the most important insects on the African savannah, and any trade in them is bound to have negative consequences for the ecology of the grasslands.A Kenyan official arranges the containers of ants at the court. Photograph: Kenya Wildlife Service/AP“Harvester ants are seed collectors, and they gather [the seeds] as food for themselves, storing these in their nests. A single large harvester ant colony can collect several kilos of seeds of various grasses a year. In the process of collecting grass seeds, the ants ‘drop’ a number … dispersing them through the grasslands,” says Martins.The insects also serve as food for various other species including aardvarks, pangolins and aardwolves.Martins says he is surprised to see that smugglers feeding the global “pet” trade are training their sights on Kenya, since “ants are among the most common and widespread of insects”.“Insect trade can actually be done more sustainably, through controlled rearing of the insects. This can support livelihoods in rural communities such as the Kipepeo Project which rears butterflies in Kenya,” he says. Locally, the main threats to ants come not from the illegal trade but poisoning from pesticides, habitat destruction and invasive species, says Martins.Philip Muruthi, a vice-president for conservation at the African Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi, says ants enrich soils, enabling germination and providing food for other species.“When you see a healthy forest … you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he says.

Belgian Teenagers Found With 5,000 Ants to Be Sentenced in 2 Weeks

Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at $9,200 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at $9,200 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks, a Kenyan magistrate said Wednesday.Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya’s main airport, said she would not rush the case but would take time to review environmental impact and psychological reports filed in court before passing sentence on May 7.Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house. They were charged on April 15 with violating wildlife conservation laws.The teens have told the magistrate that they didn’t know that keeping the ants was illegal and were just having fun.The Kenya Wildlife Service had said the case represented “a shift in trafficking trends — from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species.”Kenya has in the past fought against the trafficking of body parts of larger wild animals such as elephants, rhinos and pangolins among others.The Belgian teens had entered the country on a tourist visa and were staying in a guest house in the western town of Naivasha, popular among tourists for its animal parks and lakes.Their lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua Magairo, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her clients did not know what they were doing was illegal. She said she hoped the Belgian embassy in Kenya could “support them more in this judicial process.”In a separate but related case, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen were charged after they were found in possession of 400 ants in their apartment in the capital, Nairobi.KWS had said all four suspects were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.The ants are bought by people who keep them as pets and observe them in their colonies. Several websites in Europe have listed different species of ants for sale at varied prices.The 5,400 ants found with the four men are valued at 1.2 million Kenyan shillings ($9,200), according to KWS.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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