Via Community News Service, a VTSU-Castleton internship, for Rutland Herald
ORWELL — A Montpelier-based regional land trust that aims to conserve Vermont wilderness recently announced that it is in the process of conserving land in Orwell. The landowner is donating her land to achieve her long-held aspiration of ensuring it is never developed and remains a refuge for wildlife species close to her heart.
Last month, the Northeast Wilderness Trust (NEWT) announced its preservation of the 135-acre parcel. Owner Pat Stevenson said she bought the land intending to later donate it for preservation.
“I’ve only owned it for six years, so I bought it with the intention of (eventually) donating it,” she said.
She said she finally decided to donate after her business partner passed away.
“Then my partner in the business died, and now I’m 71, and I just feel like I’d like to pass it on sooner to Northeast Wilderness Trust,” she said.
John Leibowitz, NEWT president and CEO, said he met Stevenson roughly six years ago, when she had purchased the property.
“She had purchased this really special piece of land with the intent of one day conserving it,” he said. “We got together, we walked the pond on the property and visited these beautiful old trees.”
He said he told her they would be ready when she was willing to donate, and eventually, she was.
“And so, six years later, she let us know that she was ready to conserve the property and ensure that its future was forever wild,” he said.
Leibowitz said what they do is a rare form of conservation in Vermont.
“I think about 25% of Vermont now is conserved in some manner,” he said. “But only about 3% of Vermont is conserved as ‘forever wild,’ so the vast majority of conservation is still actively managed, and in many cases, logged for commercial use.”
He said the trust’s mission to conserve state wildlands helps balance commercial conservation.
“(With) forever wildland, we’re doing something different. And importantly, both of these things are very complementary,” he said. “We need both wildlands and managed forests, but we have way too little wildlands in Vermont. That’s where Northeast Wilderness Trust serves the common good in that manner.”
According to Colby Galliher, NEWT editorial communications specialist, the land will be called Wolf Tree Wilderness Sanctuary, and it has been a haven for natural habitats uncommon in the state.
“The future sanctuary’s soils and proximity to Lake Champlain have given rise to natural communities uncommon in Vermont,” he said. “These ecosystems produce a bounty of food for wildlife in the form of nuts, or mast.”
Galliher said the land’s most notable feature is the tree species it will soon be named after.
“The property was mostly pastureland as recently as the early 20th century,” he said. “Old field trees, which today dwarf the younger trees that surround them, likely seeded the property’s forests. These were formerly referred to as ‘wolf trees’ because they were believed to devour sunlight and nutrients at the expense of saplings around them.”
Galliher said this belief has been disproven, and the name serves as a reminder of how a once-negative element of the land became its most positive.
Stevenson said this donation was something she felt she had to do for the land she loves so dearly, and for the good of Vermont’s wildlife.
“It’s something I have to do in my life,” she said. “To just give the land a chance.”
