The Middleton Stream Team is proud to announce that Pike Messenger, a founding member and author of our WATER CLOSET blog, has received the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commission’s (MACC) Environmental Service Award for Outstanding Conservation Leadership and Education. This was presented at MACC’s Annual Environmental Conference last Saturday at the Holy Cross College in Worcester.
MACC annually recognizes special people who have worked long and hard to protect our state’s natural environment with this prestigious award.
Pike Messenger is a rare person who has worked diligently over his entire lifetime to promote the conservation of fragile ecosystems particularly around our brooks, ponds, rivers, wetlands and adjacent uplands, and does so with both passion and gentlemanly good manners.
Congratulations Pike!
There is no one more deserving in the whole state of Massachusetts for this honor than this good and humble man. If Pike is reading this now he is probably getting embarrassed that such a fuss is being made over him, but that quality is part of why he is so loved in the town of Middleton. When I was on the Conservation Commission in the 1990’s, Middleton was exploding with growth. Pike was our agent, our liaison between the developers, engineers and government officials. He educated us about every proposed project and guided us on what would be most important in protecting our valuable environmental resources. His knowledge and love of the natural landscape was unsurpassed. He always worked 2 or 3 times the amount of hours each week than he was actually being paid for to work …… he loved it! To echo Joan’s earlier comment, we have been extremely fortunate to have someone like Pike watching over our community for all these years.
Pike is a special person who so generously shares his knowledge of biology and the environment with our group of hikers, Streamteamers, IRWA members and others. We are so fortunate to have him in our community. Congratulations, Pike. This award was certainly well deserved.