Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust completed four conservation projects on the last day of the year, including 373 acres acquired in Northfield and Warwick as part of the Metacomet-Monadnock Forest Legacy Project.
Royalston musician Diane Lincoln, who performs around New England and at selected events outside the region as Linq, has donated a conservation restriction to Mount Grace on her 45-acre property. Previously a small dairy farm, the land had grown up into early successional forest. After buying the land in 1981, Diane brought back 2 ½ acres of pasture and fenced it for horses and kept the remaining woods, which slope down to a large wetland, as they were.
Tom Wansleben is Mount Grace's Stewardship Biologist. He recently joined landowner Bill Rose to lead a workshop describing sustainable forestry at Red Apple Farm.
Demonstrating and encouraging sound forest management is a significant part of our stewardship program at Mount Grace. Mount Grace is recognized locally as a model working lands trust, partnering with landowners in support of sustainable forestry, and this Fall offered an opportunity to get that message out globally.
Entering its third year as a statewide program, MassLIFT-AmeriCorps continues to recruit volunteers in support of land conservation, land stewardship, and service learning. Mount Grace, which founded and directs the program, has four AmeriCorps members this year.
Reggie and Mel Haughton have owned their land on Phillipston's Baldwin Hill Road since 1977, raising a family in the woods near Thousand Acre Brook. “We wanted to protect the land and wildlife so that future generations can enjoy nature," says Mel. "We were pleased to join with other landowners to conserve the woods, fields and wetlands of the Thousand Acre Swamp. “
Local farmers Frank, Ken, and Ray Girouard have conserved 42 acres of wooded land north of their families’ Murdock Farm. Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust and the Town of Winchendon will co-hold a permanent conservation restriction on the land.
Conservation groups from up and down the Connecticut River Watershed joined together in Hartford this Thursday to witness US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar designate the Connecticut River and its Watershed as the nation's first National Blueway.
Neighbors, hikers, and casual visitors to the Paul C. Dunn Woodland Preserve are all asking the same question...What are those things?
Mount Grace’s latest public conservation area has been established thanks to a Petersham couple participating in the new Massachusetts Conservation Land Tax Credit Program.
Northfield landowners Bill and Christine Copeland have helped inaugurate Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust’s twenty-fifth year of land conservation by donating a 183-acre ‘Forever Wild’ conservation restriction to Mount Grace.
