Northern Connecticut Land Trust

Land Trust Acquires 58 Acre Plot of Land

In March, 2010 the Northern Connecticut Land Trust acquired the 58-acre Moseley property in Ellington. The cost of the parcel was 185,000.00 shared by the State of Connecticut, the Bafflin Foundation, the Fields Pond Foundation, the town of Ellington, and the land trust. The land will be managed and owned by the Trust. Abutting the Nye-Holman State Forest, and sharing a boundary line with the town of Stafford, the forested site will remain as open space.

The culmination of a series of acquisitions in the past year, the Trappe land in Somers (138 acres) and a conservation easement (136 acres) on the White Farm in Stafford has enabled the Land Trust to protect and preserve 1,280 acres in the towns of Somers, Stafford, Ellington, East Windsor, Enfield, Vernon and Tolland.

Take a look at the Chestnuts!

Richard Bailey, Orchard Manager of the Chestnut nursery (photo credit J. Gage)

The trees in the picture were planted as nuts in the spring of 2007. About 25% of the 2007 trees flowered this year and one tree has clusters of nuts growing. Their rate of growth is amazing, a characteristic of the native American chestnuts that made them such a valuable tree for lumber and food. Additional nuts from different mother trees were planted in 2008 and 2009. In another year or two, the trees in the orchard will be deliberately infected with the blight. The trees that have the genes for blight resistance will be selected to produce the next generation if blight resistant chestnut trees.

Northern Connecticut Land Trust Receives $50,000.00 Grant

The Northern Connecticut land Trust (NCLT) has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Lead Trust-Cox Family Fund at the Boston Foundation. The NCLT will use this grant toward the purchase of a 30 acre forested property near Webster Road in Ellington. The Land Trust will protect the property as open space and open it to the public for passive recreation. The property abuts the Shenipsit State forest and contains a trail that connects to the Soapstone Mountain Blue Dot trail system.

When the Ellington Board of Selectmen decided in February of this year not to purchase of this property as open space, the Land Trust Board of Directors, recognizing the value of this parcel for recreation, watershed protection and wildlife preservation, decided to start a fund raising effort. The Land Trust submitted grant requests to the Boston Foundation and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection to fund the purchase. The DEP grant request is currently under review by the State.

The Northern Connecticut Land Trust,( www.northernctlandtrust.org ), is an all volunteer tax exempt organization dedicated to the protection of the natural resources of Ellington Enfield, Somers, Stafford, East Windsor, and Vernon. For more information, contact Jim Gage at 875-6971 or Culver Modisette at 684-5538.

New Year's Day Hike

The New Year was welcomed in by the group attending the annual New Year's Day hike. The hike was well attended with folks enjoying the snow, the cold and comraderie. Judy Snyder led the hike at McCann's and Whitaker's properties and the group enjoyed hot chocolate and warming conversation afterwards.

Photo Credit: Wes Smith (and Abbey, the Golden Retriever)

PROJECT COMPLETED: A NEW BRIDGE!

Somers Boy Scout, Anthony Morello sought out the Northern Connecticut Land Trust to determine if there was a need for an Eagle Scout Project. Indeed, there was! Wes Smith, Project Coordinator, suggested that the bridge over Shady Brook on McCanns Family Farm be rebuilt. Anthony recently completed this project. The old bridge was rotted and had become unsafe. Thanks to Anthony, the bridge is in fine form.

LAND TRUST'S HOLDINGS SURPASS 1000 ACRES

Some 22 years ago, the Northern Connecticut Land Trust (NCLT) acquired its first property, the 65 acre Skyline Scenic Area in Somers. When NCLT closed on the 138 acre Trappe Property on Bald Mountain in Somers on October 9, 2009, the land trust surpassed 1000 acres in its holdings. As the last piece of open space on Bald Mountain, the Trappe holding caps the preservation efforts of the Town of Somers and NCLT to preserve Bald Mountain as a wildlife refuge laced with hiking trails. Underlying the property is an aquifer that supplies water to the town.

A true "joint effort:, the purchase was made possible by a coalition of the Department of Environmental Protection, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Town of Somers and the NCLT. At the closing, the parcel was deeded to NCLT. The negotiating team of NCLT's President Culver Modisette, Treasurer Jim Gage and Somers Town Planner Patrice Carson issued a statement saying, "We are grateful to the State of Connecticut and the Hartford Foundation for their ready acceptance of our proposals. It was a very positive relationship."

2008-2009 ANNUAL REPORT

The 2008-2009 Annual Report is now located on the Newsletters page. Enjoy!

Chestnut Farm August 2009

Photo Credit James Gage

Trillium

HIKE/WALK/PADDLING SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

CHECK BACK LATER FOR 2010 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS. Join fellow members and friends for a wonderful year of hikes and jaunts.

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit” (Edward Abbey)

LAND TRUST AQUIRES OPEN SPACE IN TOLLAND

The Northern Connecticut Land Trust had a Merry Christmas indeed, as it received an 83.8 acre gift from Lee and Lamont Realty. Surrounding the future Kent South development in Tolland, CT, the land is rolling, well-wooded and criss-crossed by two streams. The new Land Trust property will be preserved as open space and will be open to the public for passive recreation. Richard Lee of the realty commented, "We hope future generations will enjoy the preservation of this beautiful parcel."

The Land Trust will mark the boundaries and undertake a management program as it becomes familiar with the acreage. In the future, hiking trails on this property may be linked with other protected land owned by the Town of Tolland.

The Northern Connecticut Land Trust, in its 21st year, seeks to preserve and protect open space and agricultural lands in the towns of Somers, Stafford, Vernon, Ellington, Enfield and East Windsor. With this acquisition, Tolland will be welcomed into the fold.

Beetles Galore! By Jerry Stage (Photo credits: Natalie "Nanny" Audinot)

Patience and hope are worthy virtues. Sometimes they’re even rewarded. This certainly seems to be true for the biological control project initiated in 2005 by the NCLT’s Land Stewardship Committee to control the well established infestation of Purple Loosestrife in the Scantic Riparian Area (SRA), a prime wetland along the Scantic River in Somers.

Loosestrife and Beetles (Photo Credit: Natalie "Nanny" Audinot)

Purple Loosestrife is a serious invasive pest introduced over 200 years ago from Eurasia. Since then it has spread throughout the eastern parts of the USA. Though beautiful it crowds out native plants in wetlands and makes the sites useless for our native flora and fauna.

In June 2005 our beetle farming team raised and then released 8,000 or so leaf beetles in the genus Galerucella at six strategic locations in the SRA. Details of the project were published in the September 2005 issue (No. 15) of the Northern Connecticut Land Trust’s newsletter, “Landmark” (located under Resources on this site).

Alas, in 2006 there were no signs of the beetles and the loosestrife seemed to be thriving if not actually spreading. Since the beetles survive most of the late summer and all winter as adults in the roots of their host plants we suspected the torrential rains and flooding in October of 2005 killed them all off. After all, much of the site had been under as much as 5 feet of water for many weeks and lesser amounts for most of the winter and early spring.

No beetles could be found again in 2007 but an occasional plant showed feeding damage that appeared to have been caused by some chewing beetle. Just maybe Galerucella. In spite of that spark of hope I was sufficiently discouraged that I called Donna Ellis ( Loosestrife contact person from the UConn Extension service) to plan a second release the next year. That turned out to be unnecessary.

Recent visits to the site this June and July show BEETLES GALORE! It is hard to find a single plant anywhere on the site that doesn’t show at least some sign of beetle damage. Many plants are severely mutilated and stunted. It’s very difficult to know how many beetles are there but I’d guess they number in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. It is clear that in this case patience and hope paid off!

We do not expect the loosestrife to disappear altogether but rather to drop back into a more natural balance with the rest of the flora. It will be interesting to see how the composition of the flora in the affected area changes as that happens.