Madison Voters Approve Airport Purchase

Voters in Madison have approved the town’s purchase of the former Griswold Airport property, comprising 42 acres of open grass lands, a rare coastal forest, and salt marsh habitats. The vote was 3,347 yes to 2,371 no. The town plans to refurbish the site and open a new coastal park, with athletic fields, walking trails, and wildlife viewing areas.

Bill McCullough, a leader in the Madison Citizens to Save Griswold Land, said, “This evening we are celebrating a great accomplishment that took much work by literally hundreds of people over the past decade. ... The land has significant environmental value for birds, finfish and shellfish.  By this decision, Madison will have set a great example for our entire state.”

“This is a tremendous victory for people and for wildlife,” said Tom Baptist, executive director of Audubon Connecticut, the state organization of the National Audubon Society. “When most of us think of globally important conservation issues, we think of the Amazon Rainforest or the Great Barrier Reef, but the Griswold Airport land is a globally significant Important Bird Area right here in Connecticut.  We owe a great debt of thanks to the remarkable bi-partisan coalition of state elected officials, town selectmen, citizen advocates, our partners at the Trust for Public Land, the developer and, most of all, to the people of Madison, who chose to preserve this unique site as a coastal park. This is a local action that will make a global difference for generations to come.”

Menunkatuck President Suzanne Botta Sullivan said, “Menunkatuck has been involved with the effort to preserve the Griswold Airport land since 2001, when former Menunkatuck President Henry Ferris wrote members alerting them to the potential threat of development. We are delighted that the work of the last decade has ended with the Airport land being saved from development.”

According to Audubon, the Griswold Airport land comprises a native coastal grassland, sand plain, tidal marsh and a stand of mature coastal forest that provides wildlife habitat unlike anything currently available at Hammonasset Beach State Park. The property provides an essential buffer that safeguards the health of the Hammonasset tidal marsh, home to a globally significant nesting population of Saltmarsh Sparrows among many other species of birds, fin fish, shellfish and plants.

Photo by Patrick Comins, Audubon Connecticut “The forested hummock at the edge of the marsh on the old airport property. This is probably an amazing place to be in May..an isolated oak-sassafrass forest with greenbriar-dominated understory...sounds like good stopover habitat to me!” From Facebook.