Farmington Valley, CT

Seven towns (Avon, Canton, East Granby, Farmington, Granby, Simsbury, and Suffield) in north-central Connecticut are working with the Farmington River Watershed Association and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Metropolitan Conservation Alliance to protect biodiversity.

These seven towns are in the Farmington River watershed in the rolling countryside west and north of Hartford, Connecticut. The Farmington River is the most fished river in Connecticut; the watershed also provides drinking water, either directly or through recharge areas to groundwater, for over 600,000 people in the Hartford region. About 14 miles of the West Branch of the Farmington River were designated as “Wild and Scenic” in 1994 by the National Park Service.

The forested valleys along the river have been primarily rural, growing more suburban closer in to Hartford, but since the beginning of the twenty-first century, residential development has expanded into agricultural and natural/forested areas. Fringe communities are growing more rapidly than urban areas—town populations throughout the Farmington Valley grew from 10 percent to 14 percent in the 1990s, while the City of Hartford lost almost 18,000 persons during the same decade. This fringe population growth has spurred local officials to participate in a regional study of biodiversity and land use programs that would help to protect that existing biodiversity.

For example, Suffield is next to I-91 and Bradley International Airport, where suburban sprawl is increasingly a threat to the area’s biodiversity. Some of the habitats present include bogs, streams, ponds, mixed woods, rocky ridges, and grasslands. Although some portions of these habitats are already protected, such as the traprock ridge in Talcott Mountain State Park, much of the valley’s biodiversity occurs outside protected areas. Reasons to protect biodiversity in this area are many. Bats, birds, and frogs keep mosquito populations down, which helps to control West Nile virus. Insects pollinate local apple orchards and vegetable farms. Marshy wetlands hold and absorb stormwater, helping to prevent flooding and to purify water as it percolates through to groundwater areas.

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