Banner year for conservation in Northwest Connecticut

A combination of state grants, multigenerational land gifts and conservation easements kept local and regional land trusts busy in 2023 and protected thousands of acres of farmland, fields, forests and undeveloped watershed land for future generations.

In April, the Kent-based nonprofit Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy (NCLC) was named one of only 12 organizations statewide to receive a $750,000 state grant from the Connecticut Department of Agriculture’s Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Grant Program.

The state allocated $7 million for the initiative in a highly competitive process that drew 78 applications seeking more than $55 million in grant funds.

Catherine Rawson, executive director of the NCLC, said the grant will fund climate-smart agricultural assessments by the nonprofit Berkshire Agricultural Ventures of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, as well as provide funding for projects and farmland improvements that will help working lands in the region become more resilient in the face of climate change.

A month later, The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut (TNC) announced two Northwest Corner land donations in areas of “high ecological importance” totaling 346 acres, will expand protections for critical forest and wetlands habitats.

The multigenerational land gifts, at preserves in Winchester and Falls Village, are connected to what TNC scientists have labeled the “Resilient and Connected Network” areas of lands across North America with limited human disturbance, robust microclimates that can withstand climate change and linkages to other sites in the network.

Then in July, NCLC announced it will purchase a conservation easement for $1 million on 5,500 acres of pristine, forested land surrounding the Colebrook Reservoir in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The environmental group Save the Sound, which also was a party to the proceedings, said the Colebrook Reservoir is one of the state’s last few remaining large, untapped surface drinking water supplies.

“Water supply lands are of tremendous value for the present and future generations of Connecticut and Massachusetts residents,” said Roger Reynolds, senior legal director for Save the Sound, in making the announcement.

In early November, in what environmentalists called an “unprecedented” collaboration, a coalition of eight conservation groups and two limited liability companies (LLC’s) comprising private citizens joined forces to protect 1,000 acres of mature woodland forests and farmland in Connecticut and Massachusetts, valued at between $13 million and $15 million, from development.

The acreage, a portion of which offers sweeping views of the Taconic Mountain Range, was put on the market this past summer by Salisbury resident Robert Boyett.

Boyett, a retired television producer, said he turned down several lucrative offers from developers, preferring to buy time for concerned environmental groups and property owners in two states to work together to put a conservation plan in place.

The land comprises numerous separate parcels, all in various stages of preservation. One deal involved 297 acres on the north side of Twin Lakes on Tom’s Hill, which was taken off the market by an LLC comprising about 10 donors who scrambled to raise nearly $2.5 million to buy time for the Salisbury Association Land Trust (SALT) to apply for state and federal preservation grants.

A second LLC was formed to purchase a 220-acres parcel on Miles Mountain, leading to Cooper Hill. That deal has yet to close.

The coalition involved in the multiple transactions include, in addition to NCLC and SALT, the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), The Connecticut nature Conservancy, Massachusetts Nature Conservancy, the Sheffield Land Trust, the Trustees of Reservations and Massachusetts Audubon.