The Association to Preserve Cape Cod has launched The Cape We Shape, a new campaign to preserve the remaining undeveloped land that has been identified as priority natural resource areas based on its value to drinking water, water quality, critical habitat, and coastal resilience.
About 50,000 acres of Cape Cod remain undeveloped and unprotected. Of those, 40,000 acres overlap with priority natural resource areas–lands within Zone II areas to wellheads and potential water supplies, wetlands and vernal pools and their protective buffers, state and local mapped core habitats of state-listed species and critical natural landscapes, and inland and coastal flood-prone areas.
APCC’s Hanging in the Balance report—the most comprehensive review of the Cape’s water, land, climate, and ecological health—revealed that Cape Cod’s natural systems are under historic pressure. Intense development between 2001 and 2019 resulted in a loss of 25 percent of the Cape’s forest cover, approximately 4,500 acres, forever. Based on an annual assessment of water quality data, State of the Waters: Cape Cod 2025, 90 percent of the Cape’s coastal embayments and over 33 percent of freshwater ponds for which there is data, have unacceptable water quality. Communities continue to tackle wastewater and manage risks from climate and sea level rise impacts.
Based on the Cape Cod Commission’s Regional Policy Plan, 14 percent of the Cape—nearly 50,000 acres—remains undeveloped and unprotected. Of this undeveloped land, roughly 40,000 acres overlap with priority natural resource lands. “What we do with these remaining acres will define our region and its future,” said Andrew Gottlieb, APCC’s executive director. “Once developed, open space is gone forever. With development pressures greater than ever, there is urgency to act now. This campaign is designed to convey the urgency to protect priority natural resources to preserve our drinking water and overall surface water quality, and to prevent the inevitable increase in taxpayer costs to service new development.”
The campaign’s logo incorporates Morse code for SOS, the worldwide distress signal. The Cape We Shape campaign and its volunteers, mobilized as Team SOS, aim to convey the urgency in protecting these remaining priority natural resource lands in perpetuity before they are gone.
For more information, contact Andrew Gottlieb, Association to Preserve Cape Cod executive director at agottlieb@apcc.org.