In January 2005, I went for a walk in the woods following a snow fall and saw what seemed to be evidence of construction planning: stakes with surveyors’ tape.

Stakes in the snow in the woods (these later turned out to be part of a class
exercise – but I’m glad they got me all “exercised”!)

In mid-February I returned with some people who know more about trees than I do (two of whom were students at UMass in the 1950s, when the name “Prexy’s Ridge” was commonly used). We explored the area pretty thoroughly. By this time, there were surveyors’ tape tags on most of the trees larger than about 9 inches in diameter. These tags had the tree species (in English), the circumference, and an identifying number. Presumably the information was put into a GIS database.

I thought this was a test pit near the old Black Birch, but now I think it was dug by the mountain bikers who have made quite an obstacle course up there over the years.

A white oak mistakenly labeled “red oak” by the consultants hired by UMass

I began to contact other people who love old trees. No one in the Phyiscal Plant would meet with us to talk about what was being planned. However, we soon figured out that it might be part of the planned construction of new residence halls. The University had to file an Environmental Notification Form (ENF) with the state for the project; a member of the Amherst Select Board alerted us about the form. Several of us were able to attend the meeting with state officials to discuss the ENF.

At that meeting, one of the participants, Alexandra Dawson, a local environmental lawyer, noticed that the two “plans” of the proposed construction did not show the same site: the one of the overall campus for general location showed the proposed site as being more in the orchard, less in the woods; the one of the actual site showed the buildings being much more directly across the road from the Sylvan dorms, which is definitely in the woods.
We rallied lots of letters to the state during the official comment period, most of them pointing out, among other things, that the state could not approve a project where the submission documents were inaccurate. In late May, the university changed its plans and built only the dorms that are north of Eastman Lane, west of Sylvan; they built a parking lot on part of the orchard but left the woods alone.