For Sale: 200 Acres. Build to Suit. You see a lot of these enticements on the highways, and anyone with a wad of cash and a fleet of backhoes likely salivates at the sight of them.
It’s estimated that 28,000 acres of New England forest each year are permanently converted to development, coming out to about 65 acres of forest per day. When those trees are cut down, the region loses a lot more than shade for humans and condos for squirrels. With their ability to absorb carbon in staggering amounts, the region has, right in the forests of its own backyard, a partial solution to climate change — but only if action is taken to preserve them.
That’s where local land trusts can play a key role. These nonprofits — there are several in the Pioneer Valley, including Kestrel Land Trust, Hilltown Land Trust and Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust — work with landowners, communities, and state and federal agencies to secure property for conservation, from wildlands to woodlands, farmlands and riverlands.
It’s the forestland they help preserve that is key in a climate change world. That’s because forests are one of the few natural carbon capture sources out there, having the ability to store massive amounts of carbon dioxide and suck it right out of the atmosphere. They give us sequestration, and keep on sequestering, sort of a “groundbreaking technology” that’s been all around us the whole time.
New England forests already absorb 14% of carbon emissions, but they could do substantially more, almost twice that, according to a new report from the Highstead Foundation called “New England’s Climate Imperative — Our Forests as a Natural Climate Solution,” which urges the adoption of five pathways to human survival, with avoiding deforestation chief among them.
“If we reduce deforestation to 7,000 acres per year in New England, 74 million U.S. tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) would be kept out of the atmosphere by 2050,” the report states. “Less than 4% of our forests are currently protected as wildland reserves. We need to ensure that a minimum of 10% of New England’s forests are allowed to grow and mature without the influence of any extractive land uses. This would sequester an additional 50 million U.S. tons CO2e by 2050.”
The report also calls for improved forest management to maximize carbon sequestration; using wood as building materials instead of steel and concrete — the trees keep storing carbon even when we saw’em up — and 50% of new buildings should be made of wood; and ending the practice of clear-cutting forests to install solar arrays.
Advancing the “Wildlands and Wetlands” vision found in the report are the area’s land trusts, which have an ever-increasing role in stemming the climate change onslaught before it’s too late.
“There’s a growing awareness that forests can be a solution to climate change,” said Kristin DeBoer, executive director of the Kestrel Land Trust in Amherst. “We’re setting the goal of 10% of forests as wild land by 2050, where nature is free to be on its own. Carbon sequestration is a pretty tangible way to make a difference.”
Of course, it’s got to be troublesome for any landowner while significant bags of money are scattered in their path like rose petals.
“We do our best to offer fair market value,” DeBoer said. “The great thing about land trusts — we’re able to be on the ground, take something very complex and make it simple. Towns that have passed the (Community Preservation Act), Kestrel helps put that puzzle together.”
Projects can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, she said, but “it’s a way to protect places that people love forever, and it’s written in the Registry of Deeds.”
In its Make a Promise to the Valley campaign, Kestrel raised $5.6 million, enough to hopefully follow through on its pledge to preserve 5,000 acres, on both sides of the river, within five years.
This year’s acquisition by Northampton of 225 acres to be added to the Saw Mill Hills Conservation Area is a project Kestrel was delighted to be part of, DeBoer said.
“As a forest moves into old age, we can maximize carbon storage,” she said.
Dominant trees in old growth forests are said to store the most carbon, not to mention all the carbon swallowed up by the rich soil around them. Getting a forest to old age is the trick.
“There are a lot of landowners looking for conservation options,” DeBoer said, “and lots of funding from the state and federal.”
Echoing that is Thomas Anderson, executive secretary for the state’s Commission for Conservation of Soil, Water and Related Resources.
“The Conservation Land Tax Credit program provides direct benefits to the landowners,” he said, “and they don’t have to sell their land in order to protect its conservation values in perpetuity; they can grant or sell a ‘conservation restriction’ to a land trust. This protects the land from development but still allows the landowner to use the land in a way that protects its natural and cultural resources.”
This is exactly the route taken by Sandy Warren of Williamsburg, who worked closely with the Hilltown Land Trust and its Executive Director Sally Loomis.
“A funny story,” said Warren, 79, a retired schoolteacher, who, along with husband Jim Locke, thought they’d found the perfect home, with room enough for their four children, on 5 acres not far from Petticoat Hill. “Then I got a call at school and was told to come to the office for a phone call. ‘Are you sitting down?’ said Jim. ‘There’s 50 more acres up here for the same price!’ We ended up getting this beautiful piece of land. It came with a swimming pond — I went in every day, until it froze.
“Jim died five years ago,” Warren continued, “a terrible loss. We put up a path, Locke’s Loop, where you can cut through to Petticoat Hill. I wanted to protect this land in Jim’s memory, so I started that process. Sally (from Hilltown Land Trust) was great and helpful, guiding me every step of the way.”
During a required survey of the property, another 5 acres were found. “I had more than I thought I had!”
As for the perks of her restriction agreement, she still gets wood off the land for fuel and simply asks that the parcel be kept open for snowmobiles.
Warren said nearby neighbors are thinking of doing the same thing with their land.
“I think that landowners who have a relationship with their land are the ones who want to see it preserved in perpetuity,” Loomis said. With headquarters in Ashfield, the organization is tasked with preserving ecological diversity in 13 towns.
Most recent was the strategic preservation of 105 acres of forest in Worthington, sitting between two already protected areas, sold to the trust by a lumber company.
“They had hesitancy in the midst of negotiations as land prices went sky high, but they knew the right thing to do,” Loomis said. “One of the things this did was to provide a north-south corridor for wildlife; it’s very important that they can move within habitats.”
Loomis calls development a daunting foe.
“It feels more and more precarious. Since COVID, people found that they could work remotely — good things for all of us. But now people are looking for smaller communities to live in. Development pressure is more acute that ever. Any property in the hilltowns got gobbled up. As prices for timber go up, people are selling. Conservation is not always foremost on their minds.”
Funding can be key in these matters, with state grants accounting for a portion of it, but the acquisition of land and the staff time to navigate hurdles along the way takes time.
“We started one project two years ago; it’ll be finished by 2024,” Loomis said. “We rely heavily on private individuals, donations from people who put their money where their values are.”
The trust is in the midst of an online survey seeking input from locals on land conservation priorities in the hilltowns, and has been garnering good response.
“A way to broaden the voices,” Loomis said. “Of high priority was the protection of wildlife, wildlands and waterways.”
Part of the Hilltown Land Trust’s mission statement mentions that “resultant actions must be anchored in the truths of the past, the realities of today, and be focused on future outcomes.”
Loomis added: “Often, the history we tell of this region is that of white settlers. … Moving forward, we want to include the Indigenous history of the land, including Indigenous dispossession.”
“There are 1 million acres at risk in the state,” said Emma Ellsworth, executive director of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust in Athol. “The greatest threat to our forests is development. The biggest thing to do is preserve them. We have a long history of not protecting them.”
To that end, Mount Grace recently finished a 750-acre project in which 12 different parcels were protected. That effort included partnering with Mass Audubon, Royalston, Orange, Warwick and the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
As for turning back the global warming tide, she cautioned, “It takes a full community effort and we need to be really flexible as to how to meet the climate crisis. Compromise is inevitable.”
But when you cut a deal, she said, “and punch a punch and pack it in for perpetuity, you start thinking, ‘How do we protect as much forest as possible?’”
With that, Ellsworth said, comes strong stewardship, weeding out the weak and making the mighty mightier.
“Trees need space, need some air around them,” Ellsworth said. “We have relationships with forests at a lot of levels — water, the air we breathe, and also as a renewable resource.”
Protecting young trees from the ravages of deer and moose has also been a challenge for foresters.
“What happens is they really like to eat oak, white oak,” Ellsworth said. “There’s not a lot of food sources so they jam onto these few. It’s really hard for the regrowth of young forests.”
The solution? Slash Walls, developed by Cornell University, where generally useless logging residues are used to form barriers around regenerating stands, excluding deer long enough for the trees to grow beyond their reach. Mount Grace has successfully employed such methods in Warwick.
The trust has also been making energy-efficient renovations at its headquarters, a 1770s farmhouse, the Skyfield Arboretum, a place surrounded by conservation land.
“It’s been benignly neglected for lots of years,” Ellsworth said, “but we kept that historic character and got funding from an area that’s not wealthy. We used local timber for all new construction. In the end, we were just too attached to it.”
Ellsworth, like many in the land trust community, is a true outdoorswoman, and counts canoe racing and deer hunting among her many pursuits.
“I was a late onset hunter,” she said with a laugh. “I learned how to hunt and fish later in life. I fell in love with the dogs first.”
Hunting has enjoyed a rebirth of late, particularly for women. “It’s a growing demographic,” Ellsworth said. “Not only women, but people of color who are reconnecting with nature and young people who want to know where their food comes from, and want it clean.”
Climate Change at Home is presented by Whalen Insurance