News Release

News from the Superintendent, April 2008

Date: April 30, 2008

Civic Engagement & Volunteers

Two members of Volunteers & Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, Suzanne Gall Marsh and Steve Marcus accumulated more then 500 hours of volunteer hours in 2007 and were awarded volunteer passes by NPS at the Friends annual meeting.

Charlie Boyer was also issued a pass, and was the recipient of the Superintendent's Award for Exceptional Volunteer Service. Since the park's creation in 1996, Charlie has personally donated over 8,000 volunteer hours to the park. Seventy-three Friends members contributed more than 7,000 volunteer hours in 2007, representing about half of the total volunteer hours given to the park from all sources.

National Park Week

We had two activities to celebrate National Park Week. An honor guard from the park presented the colors at the opening of the Boston Red Sox game on Earth Day, April 22. Representatives from National Park Service, United States Coast Guard, and Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation participated with assistance from one of the park's Junior Rangers and Boston Harbor Islands Alliance. Oh, yes, in case you wanted to know how the game came out—the Red Sox came from behind to beat the Angels 7-6 and win their sixth straight.

Saturday, April 22, was national Junior Ranger Day, which we celebrated on Spectacle Island. Thanks to NPS Rangers, DCR and Island Alliance staff, and several of our Island Ambassadors who worked together to present a program that has received rave reviews from participants. We offered a $5 round trip ticket along with Junior Ranger activities and badges. The final count for the program was 133 people.

One of Several Reviews: "Incredible family fun! This is one of the best buys in the Boston area...and it was such an incredibly special/memorable day. We all learned a lot, and the beauty of the place is indescribable. I'd recommend it to anyone (and already have.)"

Resource Stewardship

Over the winter we discovered the presence of cache listings for locales within the park on geocaching.org, the world’s largest geocache organization. They were located on Little Brewster, Nut, Georges, Webb, and Lovells Islands.

To provide background: A geocache is small plastic container typically filled with toys, coins, and memorabilia that serves as a "treasure" for individuals who successfully use their GPS units and the coordinates listed on geocache.org to find the cache site. To increase difficulty in finding the treasure, creators of geocache sites will bury the container (near the cistern on Little Brewster) or hide it in an abandoned building (inside of a fort building on Lovells).

The park geocache sites had received almost 300 visits since 2004. In order to meet the interests of the public, we created a park program called "IslandCache." It is entirely virtual and relies on Leave-No-Trace principles. Our IslandCache Program has seven virtual sites on three islands, and provides participants an introduction to the islands, illustrates the park’s four themes, and highlights natural and culturally significant sites. The listings on geocaching.org have been removed, and we will make sure that the physical caches are also gone in the coming months.