THE WARREN CONSERVATOR Fall 2011

From The President’s Desk

The past six months have produced a breath-taking pace of growth and constructive change at the Land Trust. Happily, we are dealing with two potential easement acquisitions that we hope to have completed by the end of 2011. Unhappily, we said good-bye with sincere thanks and appreciation to Ann Martindale, William De Seta, and Tom Paul. All of these Board members were instrumental in advising, writing for, and leading the Land Trust for the past decade and their contributions steered our work in a responsible and thoughtful manner. We will miss their leadership and multi-faceted influence for a long time. The Board has been active in recruitment and we hope to confirm promising new members at the November annual meeting. We have used several yardsticks to seek members with diverse talents in organizational skills, experienced land stewardship, and financial acuity to guide us in the years to come.

In August, the Land Trust received $5000 in funding in conjunction with our application to the Land Trust Alliance/Connecticut Land Conservation Council Challenge Grant Fund. Our intent is to apply this money to our three-year effort to gain formal accreditation by the National Land Trust Alliance.

We were blessed with a beautiful setting at Jim and Rebecca Neary’s home on Melius Road to have a party to thank the many donors who have supported us in the past year. A separate article and pictures appear in this newsletter.

We are striving to establish greater engagement with the town administration in various ways and expect to have more information to share with you as those efforts bear fruit. For example, in the spring we will coordinate with the Parks and Recreation Commission on the town cleanup and swap meet organized to commemorate Earth Day. We have found that there are many areas where we can be mutually supportive. Our desire is to become more knowledgeable about land-related issues of concern to the community and make stronger connections throughout the town. Although our primary mission is to acquire conservation easements and land donations, we also desire to foster the relationship between community members and our natural environment. Some of the projects we are undertaking are long-term. The accreditation process, certainly, has reminded us that it can be difficult to accomplish conservation goals in a short period of time. Working with new partners and with different constituencies, however, can only strengthen and broaden support for our goals. Before every decision, we always ask “who will benefit from this and who could be hurt by this.” In this way, the clear winner will be the Town of Warren as we work in partnership with a community that values a high quality of life and land for the next generation and ourselves.

We hope to see you at our annual meeting in November and hope that you will express any ideas that we could implement for the improvement of our natural surroundings.

Ted Morse
President

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