Our Beautiful Place

With the world tilting toward the winter solstice and the Connecticut landscape disappearing behind a curtain of darkness late in the afternoon, life is contracting, pulling us back toward the lights of hearth and home. The expanses of woodlands, forest, and open fields will be left pretty much to their own devices until spring draws us out again. For the most part, we are fair weather friends to our natural resources. But a study released last week by the University of Connecticut’s Center for Economic Analysis suggests that the state’s parks, forests, and open lands have a very friendly impact on us — specifically on our economic well-being — even in tough times.

The study, conducted at the behest of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection when it was still the DEP, concludes that the state’s 107 parks and 32 forests, including the Upper and Lower Paugussett forests in Newtown, generate, conservatively, $1.25 billion in economic activity annually. The study calculates the state’s parks and forests produce $544.3 million a year in direct expenditures by visitors, who numbered 4.6 million in 2010. Add to that the economic boost that comes in the form of associated 9,000 jobs, fees paid for equipment and hunting and fishing licenses, boating launches, fish hatcheries, ski passes, campground and swimming fees, gas and food purchases, and overnight accommodations, and it becomes clear that state-run open spaces are a major economic engine for Connecticut. There are also benefits for homeowners living in proximity to those resources; private properties adjacent to state parks and forests get a 12 percent bump in real estate value, according to the study.

Gone are the days when the state’s wild places were the sole domain of hunters and fishermen. In its most recent survey in 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service found that while 309,000 people engaged in those traditional outdoor sports, roughly four times that many people, 1.2 million, were drawn into the parks and forests just to watch the birds and wildlife there. The executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association told The Connecticut Mirror last week, “Because of things like hiking, biking, and birdwatching, we should consider investing a whole lot more in our parks and on the marketing side, staff side.” The economic benefits of investing in parks and open spaces scale nicely to towns the size of Newtown as well.

Consider the marketing boon local realtors got from last weekend’s feature story in the real estate section of the New York Times about the idyllic life for equine enthusiasts to be found in Newtown with its “dozens of miles of forested paths.” The overall picture was of a town invested in and enhanced by its considerable natural resources. The challenge, of course, is to preserve that picture not just as a marketing pitch, but as an accurate depiction of our enlightenment as a town — that our open lands are not just “out there” doing nothing in the winter darkness. They are working for us year-in, year-out by drawing people, and their money, to a still-beautiful place. Our beautiful place.