AMHERST — More than 1,200 acres of forestland throughout the region, including over 200 acres in Pelham, Westhampton and Williamsburg, are being donated to the Kestrel and Mount Grace land trusts for permanent conservation by an affiliate of The Lyme Timber Company.
The timberland properties are on 12 parcels that Lyme bought from W.D. Cowls Inc. last year as part of a larger transaction in which 5,260 acres were acquired for conservation purposes. They are located next to thousands of acres of contiguous conservation land and are considered high priorities for biodiversity, climate resilience and water quality within the Connecticut River watershed.
All of the land will remain forested and open to the public for backcountry recreational use.
”Kestrel Land Trust is thrilled to advance the protection of another swath of significant forestland across the Valley,” Kristin DeBoer, executive director of Kestrel Land Trust, said in a statement. “From the North Quabbin region to the hilltowns west of the Connecticut River, each of these parcels represents important forest areas for local towns and the region.”
Emma Ellsworth, executive director of Mount Grace Land Trust, called the donation “a wonderful gift, and a great outcome for the land.”
“This is a diverse group of lands, some of them easily walkable from neighborhoods and others that take a real hike to reach,” Ellsworth said. “We’re thrilled we can help ensure that they are always there for the people and animals that need them.”
Kestrel’s acquisitions are mostly in Hampshire County, with 212 acres in Pelham next to the University of Massachusetts Cadwell Forest on Mount Lincoln, and just east of the Quabbin Reservoir watershed, 238 acres in Williamsburg next to a complex of conserved forest around Brewer Brook and 235 acres in Westhampton, mostly adjacent to Dead Branch State Forest, and frontage on the North Branch of the Manhan River.
There are also 189 acres on the Westhampton-Huntington town line, adjacent to protected forest within the Holyoke drinking water supply district and, in Franklin County, 34 acres in Whately adjacent to protected forest within the city of Northampton’s drinking water supply district.
Parcels donated to Mount Grace are in Franklin County. They are 43 acres in Warwick abutting Mount Grace’s Song Conservation Area, containing intermittent streams in the headwaters of Lovers’ Retreat Brook, 103 acres in Warwick and Northfield just south of the New England National Scenic Trail and visible from Mount Grace’s nearby Richardson Overlook on Stratton Mountain, 151 acres in Montague on Chestnut Hill and Stoddard Hill, including wetlands associated with Chestnut Hill Brook and 48 acres on Bullard Hill in Wendell sitting between the Wendell State Forest and the Whetstone Wood Wildlife Sanctuary.
“Lyme is pleased with the opportunity to help acquire these additional forested tracts for conservation, adding to the hundreds of thousands of acres of land we’ve permanently protected with partners across New England,” said Peter Stein, one of Lyme’s managing directors. “Each of these newly acquired properties is critical to maintaining connectivity to benefit wildlife habitat and water quality in the Connecticut River Valley and is part of a national effort to protect the broader Appalachian landscape.”
Lyme is a private timberland investment management company that focuses on forest-related investments in the United States and Canada.
Stein also thanked W.D. Cowls for its work on conserving these tracts.
Previously, more than 5,500 acres of W.D. Cowls woodland in Leverett, Shutesbury, Pelham and Amherst were conserved as working forests in 2011 and 2020, and are now known, respectively, as the Paul C. Jones Working Forest and the Walter Cowls Jones Working Forest.
