Commonwealth Connections is a greenway and conservation initiative co-developed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the National Park Service, and over fifty trail and land conservation agencies and non-profit organizations. Begun in 1999, the initiative was designed to create "a coordinated greenway and trail network that will help conserve important resources, provide recreation and alternative transportation opportunities close to where people live, and connect communities throughout Massachusetts."
The initiative is loosely based on the grassroots success of the Appalachian Trail and on Frederick Law Olmstead's Emerald Necklace vision of an interconnected greenway linking metropolitan Boston parkland; it includes the development of new trails, maintenance and rehabilitation of existing trails, environmental and experiential education, land conservation, and support for research, stewardship, and regional conservation planning. Emphasis is on both local and multi-regional cooperative projects (rural, suburban, and urban), and includes hiking trails, universal access trails, bicycling and mountain biking trails, river corridors, as well as recreational trails used for motorized vehicles. The Massachusetts DCR contributes to the Commonwealth Connections program by enabling trails projects through providing town agencies and non-profit organizations with information, education, training, and matching grants.
Read more about Commonwealth Connections: Priorities
Famous quotes containing the words commonwealth and/or connections:
“I’the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
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And women too, but innocent and pure.”
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“Our business being to colonize the country, there was only one way to do it—by spreading over it all the associations and connections of family life.”
—Henry Parkes (1815–1896)