ELM is one of our most distinguished environmental organizations. Founded in 1898 by Joseph Nowell and Allen Chamberlain as the "Massachusetts Forestry Association," it has been a key player in the entire history of legislative efforts to protect our natural Commonwealth.

Its credits include: our State Park System; protection of our highest peak, Mount Greylock; the nation's first state law establishing Town Forests (1913); our Department of Conservation (1921); protection of the Blue Hill Reservation (1936); the State's first Water Protection Act (1941); town Conservation Commissions (1957); a Pesticide Control Commission (1962--inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring); the Coastal Wetlands and Inland Wetlands Protection Acts (1965), the Environmental Bill of Rights (1972); the Clean Waters Act (1973); the Open Space Bond and the nation's first Acid Rain Control Act (1983), the Solid Waste Act (1987); the Watershed Act (1992); and the Rivers Protection Act (1996).

In 1997, ELM formed an Environmental Collaborative of Massachusetts, then 35 charitable organizations who were associating for increased political influence and program effectiveness. Today the Collaborative has 61 institutional members and has gained momentum. In September 2006, they published the first purportedly annual report on the State of the Environment in Massachusetts, according to about 20 environmental-quality indicators that they will monitor continally. Together with their “Green Budgets,” which quantify what environmental agencies need to carry out their missions, and a “Citizen’s Guide to the Massachusetts Environment” to be published early in 2007, identifying decision-makers and information providers for programs and policies affecting the environment, ELM and other Collaborative members will increasingly speak with one focused voice to shape the public discourse and set the environmental action agenda in Massachusetts.