Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust has described 2016 one of its most successful years ever, as the trust protected more than 1,900 acres of land, including historic farms in Petersham and Wendell.
It also dedicated new conservation areas in Northfield, Orange and Royalston, published an in-depth study of farming in the region and won national praise for offering “a new blueprint for protecting ecosystems.”
Mount Grace Executive Director Leigh Youngblood focused on the importance of local families in making conservation possible during the trust’s 30th anniversary year.
“It’s an honor to be able to help landowners like Connie Blakley protect their land. She’s the fifth generation in her family to care for the Rice Family Farm in Athol, which has been passed down from mother to daughter for almost 100 years. The love and sense of responsibility that families feel for their land makes our job of conservation so much more than a task of getting the paperwork right,” Youngblood said in a year-end statement.
The Blakley land was conserved as part of Mount Grace’s Quabbin Heritage Landscape Partnership Project, which, along with the Quabbin to Wachusett Project has permanently protected thousands of acres of land including Harvard Forest’s Tom Swamp Research Area and Chimney Hill Farm in Petersham. Mount Grace also helped create the South Athol Conservation Area, a town forest now open to the public.
Dave Small, who led the first public hike through the newly protected forest, described it as “a chance to encounter the rich natural and cultural history of Athol. You can explore the woods, with its varied wildlife, kettle hole bogs, remnant sand plains, and a stretch of the old ‘Rabbit Run’ railroad bed.” Maps of the new forest are on the Town of Athol website.
Nature lovers will also be able to enjoy the accessible trail planned for Mount Grace’s new Eagle Reserve Conservation Area in Royalston and the Gunnery Sergeant Jeffrey S. Ames Trail in Northfield. Jay Rasku, Mount Grace’s Director of Community Conservation, said work to build the new trails would begin in 2017 and added, “When these new trails open, everyone including people with mobility challenges will have safe access to some of the most impressive wild places in our region.”
Over the course of its 30-year history, Mount Grace has helped to protect more than 50 farms, including community landmarks like Chase Hill Farm in Warwick, Johnson’s Farm and Seeds of Solidarity Farm in Orange, Red Fire Farm in Montague, Red Apple Farm in Phillipston, Sugarbush Farm in Wendell and Bree-Z-Knoll Farm in Leyden, as well as many smaller homestead farms. Several of these farms took center stage this year when Mount Grace released “Food and Farming in the Quabbin Region,” a new food system assessment that looked at food issues in six local towns, relying on community conversations and detailed research to paint a picture of our regional food system.
The report is designed to help farmers and local communities map out ways to support local food as part of the local economy.
The national report, “Conserving Nature in a Changing Climate,” published this fall, chose Mount Grace’s North Quabbin Regional Landscape Partnership as the case study to show how a land trust can turn climate science into local conservation. The report ends with a 28-page case study on the Partnership’s 2014 creation of a resiliency map — which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described as “a new blueprint for protecting ecosystems.”
The report shows how land trusts can help mitigate climate change and its effects. The report explains how to identify and map the places most likely to remain “resilient” in the face of climate change. As climate conditions change, resilient places are the ones most likely to continue to support a wide array of plants and animals due to landscape features such as diverse elevations, soil types and topography, which lead to ecological variety.
“This has been an inspiring anniversary year,” Youngblood added. “We began by defending protected land from the threat of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline and finished by helping to conserve some of the best-loved landmarks in our region.”
Mount Grace is a regional land trust that serves 23 towns in Worcester and Franklin counties and is supported by more than 1,200 members and by private, state and federal grants. Since 1986, Mount Grace has helped protect more than 31,000 acres.