Church & Dwight Volunteers Lend a Hand to Northeast Wilderness Trust

Group of volunteers and stewards at a preserve in vermont

An intrepid group of volunteers from Church & Dwight Corporation joined Northeast Wilderness Trust (NEWT) staff and board members in Montpelier, Vermont in September for two days of hiking and fieldwork. In recent years, Church & Dwight Philanthropic Foundation has become a valued partner to NEWT, providing generous support for the organization’s land conservation projects.

Learning to Read the Landscape

The group came to Vermont excited to see firsthand the lands that their support helps NEWT protect in perpetuity. A key goal of the trip (in addition to spotting a moose) was for the attendees to learn how to “read” the landscape at large—identifying clues about its history, ecology, and future.

On Day One the volunteers donned boots and rain jackets for an ecology-focused walk at Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve led by ecologist and NEWT board member Brett Engstrom. Engstrom provided a crash course in landscape analysis which allowed them to walk in the shoes of NEWT’s ecology, land conservation, and stewardship teams. They learned to identify several tree and plant species of the Northern Hardwood Forest and to observe how the shape of the land and the movement of water determines which plants can thrive in a given area.

The peak of the day was a spot on the eastern side of the Preserve atop one of Woodbury Mountain’s scenic waterfalls. But this vista offered more than a beautiful view. From that vantage point, the volunteers watched water flow down into nearby Greenwood Lake—and were able to visualize, as Engstrom encouraged them to do, the interconnectedness of the landscape. Engstrom underscored for the group that conserving forests is a tried-and-true way to safeguard water quality downstream. In the case of Woodbury Mountain, its protected forests encompass 39 miles of the headwaters of Vermont’s Winooski and Lamoille watersheds. The Preserve thus helps ensure that the area’s aquatic resources remain healthy, all while providing home to wildlife and sequestering carbon for generations to come.

Rebecca Blank, Vice President of Church & Dwight Philanthropic Foundation, reflected on how the Foundation’s relationship with NEWT opened her and her colleagues’ eyes to the power of an ecocentric approach. “Forever-wild conservation and rewilding makes so much sense, yet this concept was new to us. As we have continued to partner with NEWT, we have learned more about the outsized impact rewilding has on climate and wildlife. And by providing opportunities for our employees to experience these protected areas in real life helps bring even more purpose to our day and keeps us growing on our sustainability journey.”

Lending Nature a Gentle Hand

Day Two offered the volunteers the chance to put the learnings from Day One to use—and the opportunity to see how NEWT staff occasionally encourage the rewilding process with a gentle touch.

From Montpelier, the group headed north with a handful of NEWT stewardship, operations, and communications staff. The destination was Bear’s Nest Wilderness Preserve, a nearly 3,000-acre property in Richford, Vermont situated at the heart of a vital wildlife corridor connecting the state’s Northern Green Mountains and Canada. Vermont’s autumn mists cleared as the group arrived at the Preserve, the surrounding mountainsides just beginning to show the first colors of fall.

Hannah Epstein, NEWT’s Stewardship Director, gave the assembled volunteers an overview of Bear’s Nest’s history. (The property is named for its plentiful beech trees, whose branches resemble nests when climbed and twisted by black bears seeking calorie-rich beech nuts. Whispers of wishes to spot a bear—from a safe distance—coursed through the crowd. Not too likely given the amount of activity that was about to ensue!) Epstein pointed to a small meadow beside the group where just several months prior, a dilapidated house had been removed. The area was now growing up into a meadow of goldenrod and other wildflowers, a prelude to the regrowth of forest and evidence of just how quickly rewilding can unfold. Epstein told the volunteers that the previous owners of the property maintained a maple sugaring operation, the remnants of which remained in the woods nearby. The group, who started the day excited to swap keyboards for crowbars, fanned out in search of debris to be hauled out and disposed of in order to encourage the area’s rewilding.

debris on the ground of a wilderness preserve

The Church & Dwight team quickly showcased their aptitude for collaboration and grit—and their willingness to get their hands dirty. Small teams took on different tasks, from collecting rusting sap buckets to tracking down and collecting miles of plastic tubing used to transport sap from formerly tapped sugar maples to a sugar shack. The sugar shack itself constituted one of the major tasks at hand: a contingent tackled the deconstruction and removal of the structure, much of which had sunk into the soil. Volunteers discussed the species composition and age of the surrounding woods as they went about their work, building on the learning experience of the previous day.

By mid-afternoon, a massive tangle of tubing, a pile of treated boards, and a mess of buckets, metal sheeting, and other debris lay alongside the road out of the Preserve, ready to be taken away. The volunteers, many of whom did not know each other before the trip, chatted like old friends as they finished off well-earned cookies and admired the work they had done. NEWT’s Vermont Land Steward, Sophie Ehrhardt, said the group accomplished in one day what would have taken her weeks to complete on her own. The volunteers’ impact, as well as that of the Church & Dwight’s support of NEWT’s conservation work, will long outlast their visit.

“Church & Dwight’s commitment to the wild demonstrates not only their private-sector leadership on sustainability, but also the power of inviting employees to share in the work of conserving the natural world that sustains us all,” said Nicie Panetta, NEWT’s Vice President of Advancement. “We at Northeast Wilderness Trust are grateful to Church & Dwight both for the company’s enthusiastic support of forever-wild conservation and for the time, effort, and good cheer of their staff, whom we hope to meet in the woods again before too long.”

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Church & Dwight Volunteers Lend a Hand to Northeast Wilderness Trust

Learning to Read the Landscape

Lending Nature a Gentle Hand

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