Josephine Del Deo Memorial Woodland
🌿 A LANDMARK VICTORY FOR CONSERVATION IN PROVINCETOWN! 🌿
We’re thrilled to announce that the Town of Provincetown has received a $425,000 federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant, making the protection of the Josephine Del Deo Memorial Woodland a reality!
This milestone is the final step to permanently protecting this beautiful 0.64-acre woodland within the Provincetown Greenway—a vital natural habitat and wildlife corridor that connects conservation lands and provides a peaceful refuge for birds, wildlife, hikers, and nature lovers.
💚 This achievement belongs to our entire community! The Provincetown Conservation Trust (PCT) extends its heartfelt gratitude to the generous donors who helped us raise $250,000 toward this project and its conservation retriction. Your generosity, along with the Town’s commitment and this critical federal funding, has made this conservation success possible.
This parcel will be dedicated to Josephine Del Deo, the passionate Provincetown writer, painter and activist who successfully fought the development of the Province Lands on Cape Cod. Prior to the establishment of the Cape Cod National Seashore it was Josephine, alongside artist Ross Moffett, who first spearheaded protests against the extensive development proposals - plans which included golf courses and hotels. Later she would go to Washington, DC to testify before a Congressional committee and help President Kennedy pass the National Seashore Act. Without her leadership, Provincetown would look like a very different place.
“We are going to decide once and for all to keep these lands in the condition in which we inherited them for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children, forever and ever.”
Location of the Josephine Memorial Woodland
The 0.64 acre parcel at 43 Atkins Mayor Road abuts other conservation land as well as the Old Colony Nature Pathway, a woodland trail used by residents and visitors alike for nature walks, hiking, dog walks, and birdwatching. The parcel expands the amount of open space land available for natural resource protection, recreational activities, quality of life and aesthetics, and for increasing the town’s resiliency to the impacts of climate change and the increasingly dramatic weather events associated with it.
The site is located wholly within an area designated Core Habitat by MassWildlife BioMap - the highest-ranked designation for wildlife habitat diversity, quality and persistence. In recent years, more than 120 species of birds have been recorded by local naturalists in and around the parcel.
