Save Crane Ledge Woods

The grassroots and entirely volunteer-led Crane Ledge Woods Coalition needs your support to save the largest unprotected urban forest left in Boston. We are raising funds as part of a private-public partnership effort to fairly compensate the current property owners and put pressure on the city of Boston to purchase and preserve our local forest permanently.

For decades, the 24-acre Crane Ledge Woods has been inaccessible and mostly unknown to the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods of Hyde Park, Roslindale and Mattapan surrounding it in southwest Boston.

Now a multinational, multi-billion-dollar property company intends to construct 10 buildings containing 270 rental units, 415 parking spaces and several roads on this land. From a beautiful green space of crucial wildlife habitats - shady forest, flower-filled meadows, rocky cliffs and alcoves, vernal pools and streams - the proposed project would turn Crane Ledge Woods into an immense urban heat island of impervious asphalt and concrete. This ecological devastation would rob our local wildlife of their homes, and its gentrifying effect would force many of us and our neighbors out of ours.

The proposed construction would require clear-cutting 14 acres of forest and blasting steep rock slopes and multi-ton boulders with homes abutting the site above and below. Hyde Park has already been experiencing the worst tree loss of all Boston neighborhoods - recently being the only neighborhood with net tree loss in all land use categories.

Local residents have shared countless stories of damaged foundations, noxious fumes, suffocating dust clouds and many other disruptive dangers from failed construction projects on this site in the past. A large landfill containing the waste from a citywide lead abatement project in the early 90’s sits directly uphill of the potential blasting site, risking large amounts of lead poisoning our groundwater.

In response to this imminent threat to our community and local ecology, the Crane Ledge Woods Coalition (CLWC) - a grassroots-organized group of neighborhood associations, residents and other advocates - rapidly formed and has been growing in size and strength. We are working tirelessly to protect our neighborhoods, which the city of Boston designated Environmental Justice populations due to our already inequitable access to public green space and the disproportionate impacts of climate change we experience.

Crane Ledge Woods provides the surrounding community with clean air, protects our homes against increasing and intensifying flooding, shields us from worsening heat island effect, and mitigates climate-related health risks like asthma, among other benefits. As a protected urban wild and public park, under the care of the city’s Conservation Commission and local residents, Crane Ledge Woods could enhance quality of life and environmental equity for our neighborhoods and benefit the entire city!Save Crane Ledge Woods 

To fulfill our mission, the CLWC is building a public-private partnership enabling the city to purchase the land as green infrastructure for inland climate mitigation and placing it under the Conservation Commission’s protection. The combined funding, advocacy and expertise of diverse public and private partners will also instill confidence in the current property owner and make a mutually beneficial willing seller agreement possible. As part of our shared commitments to social and ecological equity, the CLWC seeks just outcomes for all stakeholders, while prioritizing those most marginalized and at risk.