Leaving Cape Cod in a Better Place Than You Found It

Rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty is a great way to give back. Recently, a team of 50 volunteers from CARE for the Cape and Islands spent the day ‘sprucing-up’ the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center (CMMC). Volunteers cleared trails, weeded gardens, removed debris along the grounds as well as painted and cleaned the interior, the half-day of service helping ready the CMMC for another season. For similar clean-up days, CARE choses locations that both visitors and residents can experience, cultivating awareness of natural resources and local history that creates a connection and deeper appreciation of the land and environment.

CARE is designed to empower residents and visitors to take joint ownership in preserving the beauty, ecology and culture of the Cape and Islands. Now in it’s fifth year, the focus on sustainable travel connects the Cape’s fragile ecosystem with its significant place in American history. Both are reasons people visit and chose to stay on Cape Cod, and connecting the two provides a more enriching, if not rewarding, experience.

Here are a few more cool projects you can support with CARE (pun intended!):

• Beach Trash to Treasure on Nantucket. Do to growth in amounts of trash

  

  finding its way onto beaches and into the ocean, a Nantucket-based artist is turning trash into art while raising awareness on up-cycling (reuse in such a way that produces a higher quality of original material) and conservation. Why this is a problem? Plastic is finding its way into the human food chain through micro plastics found in the fish we eat. Everyone should think about that for more than a moment, and appreciate the implications of this reality. Because we can’t see this happening, it’s hard to know what to do about it, let alone think about it. To reduce our use of plastics, we just need to make small behavior changes. For example, choose stainless steel water bottles, use glassware for food storage, pressure your barista to use paper cups (many already do), bring reusable bags shopping (grocery, retail, etc), tell your waiter not to put a straw in your drink, find wood-handled toothbrushes (they exist!), or remember to pack silverware on picnics. We must remove plastic litter from the environment.

• Provincetown Sidewalk Buttlers. Worthy goal, keeping cigarette butts off the street and out of the waste stream. Why this is a problem? During International Coastal Clean-Up Day, over 1.8 million cigarette butts were removed from beaches. So-called sidewalk “buttlers” have been installed in high traffic areas in downtown Provicetown to not just collect the butts, but to recycle and compost the materials.
• Coloring Book for Kids from the Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance. Learning through coloring is a great way for children (and adults) to become stewards of the ocean. Get yours today!
• For visitors, another way to make a difference on your next vacation is to choose your lodging based on their environmental commitment. Some B&Bs, hotels and motels donates a portion of room fees of guests who choose environmentally friendly options (classically, choosing not to have towels or sheets changed), sharing the commitment to conservation. It may take a little longer to book your next stay, but can make a difference.

Indeed, the Cape and Islands provide a character we must preserve. “And it takes change to stay the same.”

The business community is an essential partner in keeping our community healthy, vibrant and welcoming to everyone. A few weeks ago, the Cape Sea Grille hosted the Annual Spring Wintetasting Dinner to benefit the land-saving work of the Harwich Conservation Trust. Land trusts seek to preserve land and open space that protects water resources, scenic views, wildlife habitat, and other natural features that define the environment. It’s hard to imagine the landscape of Cape Cod without the work of land trusts and other environmentally focused organizations. Like many nonprofit organizations, they need support.

If you want to actually see whales on your next whale watch, please join the 1,000 Friends of Right Whales – right now (pun always intended). The Nauset Disposal and Center for Coastal Studies to Support the Right Whale Emergency Initiative intends to raise $100,000 to help support the Right Whale Emergency Initiative. The North Atlantic right whales are among the rarest of all marine animals, and the birth rate (5 in 2017) is falling well short of combatting the death rate (50 since 2010). With an estimated population of (only) 430 individual right whales, with less than 100 being breeding females, the population is indeed endangered. We have an obligation to take action and the ability to protect the species.

The initiative seeks to address the two drivers of right whale deaths, boat strikes and entanglement. Money collected will be used to locate and monitor right whales in Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, expand slow-down warnings for boaters in areas in which they are located and, knowing where they are, increase the probability of finding and freeing entangled whales. Last year, a marine debris removal project sent divers down into three local harbors to remove old lobster traps, fishing line, trash and other items harmful to marine life. Nauset Disposal provided the dumpsters to collect and remove the debris.

Even small donations make a difference. The is especially true in the case of the 1,000 Friends of Right Whales since Nauset Disposal will match the first 75 donations! Our collective action can help save the North Atlantic Right Whale.