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The Sakonnet

Piping plover
Piping plover
© Geoff Dennis

Why the Conservancy Selected This Site
This landscape, encompassing Tiverton and Little Compton, contains barrier beaches, coastal ponds, freshwater wetlands and upland forests. It provides habitat for numerous species including the federally-threatened piping plover.

Threats
Commercial, residential, and recreational development is increasing near the Sakonnet. Plans for highways and rail improvements will bring people to the area from the larger cities and employment centers. Residential development is on the rise due to the extension of utilities into rural areas; efforts to revitalize local economies through the creation of new jobs; and suburban sprawl from nearby towns.

Besides development, the Sakonnet's natural communities are threatened by invasive species, careless agricultural and land management practices, and increased recreational use.

Plants
The state-endangered seabeach knotweed, a coastal plant of special concern, grows on Sakonnet's sand. Near Quicksand Pond, narrow-leaved cattail, rose mallow, and bulrush grow along shore edges. In Weetamoo Woods, an oak-heath forest is filled with black oak, scarlet oak, blueberries and huckleberry, and has significant stands of American holly.

Birds
The barrier beaches and sand dunes of the Sakonnet area provide breeding habitat for the federally-threatened piping plover between April and September. More common bird species include the least tern, marsh wren, black duck, grebes and mergansers.

Animals
Tiger beetle, Fowler's toad, dragonflies and foraging shorebirds live here, and migrating species such as the monarch butterfly and songbirds stop to rest.  

Our Conservation Strategy
The Nature Conservancy is targeting specific areas and species for conservation in the Sakonnet landscape. They include:

  • Upland and wetland forests of Tiverton's Weetamoo Woods area, which is the largest unfragmented forested area in the East Bay.
  • Freshwater streams, oak-holly forests and coastal salt ponds within Little Compton's Briggs Marsh and Quicksand Pond watersheds, which encompass some of Rhode Island's least-disturbed coastal salt pond communities.
  • Coastal watersheds and coastal matrix forest in the Sakonnet. 
  • The piping plover, which is threatened by development, recreation, and land management practices. The Conservancy's piping plover monitoring efforts over the past 12 years have contributed to the stabilization of Atlantic populations of this bird.

Piping plover chick
Piping plover chick
© Geoff Dennis
What TNC Has Done/Is Doing
The Nature Conservancy has been protecting land in the Sakonnet area since the late 1980's, when the Conservancy acquired Goosewing beach in Little Compton. Given a little more than 20 years of progress, land conservation and farmland preservation efforts have currently achieved protection of a total of 4,000 acres in the two Rhode Island towns. More than half of these transactions show a significant share of help from the Conservancy. Since 1990, the Conservancy has assisted or led efforts to protect 2,400 acres for biodiversity in the two Rhode Island towns.

Much of this work has been done with local partner organizations including Tiverton Land Trust and Tiverton Open Space Commission, Sakonnet Preservation Association and Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and Audubon Society of Rhode Island.

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