Why the Boy Scouts shouldn’t sell Deer Lake camp to developers
The impending sale of the scenic and beloved Deer Lake Scout Reservation in Killingworth threatens to break the 4.4-mile blue-blazed Chatfield Trail and degrade valuable natural resources.
The conservation nonprofit Pathfinders placed an offer on the property on April 30, less than a day before the deadline to beat out a $4.6 million offer by a private developer. The Connecticut Botanical Society supports preservation and requests that the CT Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of America accept the Pathfinders’ offer or allow conservation organizations more time to raise additional funds.
With its spectacular rock formations, forest, water features and physical challenges, the Chatfield Trail draws young and older nature lovers alike. It and the Deer Lake property have a high capacity to foster a nature-conservation mindset and geology and botany education. Valuable if underpublicized assets for tourism, they are a short drive from other attractions like the Mystic Aquarium, historic Essex and Connecticut River boat trips.
Rare or uncommon plants are often found in these rocky habitats. Species that come to mind are Appalachian polypody, horse gentians, Peltigera cyanolichens and a tall, robust sedge. The lovely red columbine is the larval host plant for a small, rare butterfly, the columbine duskywing. The richness of native plant life in this forest interior is a refreshing contrast to the invasive plant competitors that are usually concentrated on forest perimeters. The site offers wildlife value as well. Salamanders are usually common on talus slopes, bobcats and bats hibernate in the small caves and ravens nest on cliffs. Data from CT DEEP Fisheries taken from stations on the Deer Lake property in 1996 shows a diverse and pollution-sensitive community of stream bottom insects such as Baetis mayflies and hellgrammites.
The Deer Lake Reservation is at the south end of a 1,200-acre block of minimally fragmented forest within a matrix of residential land. Contiguous preserved lands owned by CT DEEP include the Cockaponsett State Forest, Chatfield Hollow, and Forster preserves. Preserving the
Deer Lake tract is vital for the integrity of this large, forested area, which is very important for forest interior birds and for native plant species. Like any type of organism, a plant species benefits from a reasonably large population and gene pool, which confers resilience and an ability to adapt in response to stressors like erratic weather, diseases and pests and human disturbance.
Water quality also makes development of the property unwise. In combination, CT Deep-owned open space and the Deer Lake Reservation encompass most of the Chatfield Hollow Brook watershed. The brook contributes substantial clean water to the Hammonasset River; extensive protected brackish marshes at the mouth of the river support important rare plants and birds.
Due to steep slopes and rocky shallow soils that are ill-suited to septic systems, intensive residential development of the Deer Lake site is reasonably likely to substantially increase nutrient loading to the brook, with potential to harm aquatic and littoral plant communities of Hammonasset estuary and Deer Lake. Adverse effects on Hammonasset Beach are also possible; that would be another loss for the general public, aside from the loss of two miles of the outstanding Chatfield Trail and its southern trailhead.