Talk:Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary

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Length and history
The gradient of the Ipswich is very low. The river meanders extensively. The length cited if true must be along the centerline. The distance as the crow flies is only a few miles. You can spend all morning canoing through it and walk back to your starting point. The reservation essentially preserves the wetland. It was created out of the Proctor lands. Proctor was a marble baron. The family fortune was based on quarries in Vermont. At one point he had bought much of Ipswich, Topsfield, Hamilton and Wenham. There was an active country society of moneyed person in this area, including Bradley Palmer. They all belonged to Myopia Hunt Club, played golf and polo, and staged phony fox hunts (the fox was cared for until the day of his "release" and demise). It was very pleasurable in this land of lovely waters, and many of these figures were very philanthropic out of patriotism, but about the middle of the 20th century it began to decline. All things come to an end. In 1950 (I believe) it was Proctor's turn to explain himself to his creator. His hill estate and the wetlands were purchased by the Audubon Society to preserve them. The only other competitors wished to fill in the wetlands and develop them. They would not, however, have gotten very far, as not long after, the Wetlands Act was passed. You cannot, in Massachusetts, build within a certain number of feet of wetlands, nor can you fill wetlands. Thus the term "buildable" and "non-buildable" lots came into use. If you were unlucky enough to have non-buildable lots, too bad for you. Every community in Massachusetts has an ecological board from which all construction has to seek approval. It has considerable power, but whether this is enough remains to be seen.

In any case some expansion of this article with proper refs seems warranted. The sanctuary is a significant refuge to the forest and marsh birds, just as Plum Island is to the shore birds. I will try to drop over there and take a few photos.Branigan 08:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)