Portions of this press release first appeared as a story titled “Land Trust expands Long Trail corridor protection, creates ‘forever-wild’ preserve” in VTDigger on November 17, 2025.

JAY, VERMONT—Northeast Wilderness Trust, a Montpelier-based regional land trust that focuses on wilderness conservation, announced today the permanent protection of more than 340 acres adjacent to the Long Trail corridor and Jay State Forest. The new Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve bolsters the state’s conservation landscape and strengthens northern Vermont’s wildlife corridors at a time of rapid ecosystem change.

The project capitalizes on the habitat-connectivity opportunities presented by long-distance hiking trails. One look at a map of the 272-mile Long Trail illustrates that this storied throughway is more than just a challenge for the intrepid hiker: It is a continuous stretch of conserved lands that spans the length of Vermont and connects with Canada’s Sutton Mountains. This degree of interconnection is rare for the state and central to Northeast Wilderness Trust’s vision of a wilder, more connected, and more resilient Northeast.

“The history of conservation along the Long Trail is one of incredible foresight by many individuals and organizations,” said Jon Leibowitz, President and CEO of Northeast Wilderness Trust. “We are happy to contribute to the mosaic of conserved public and private land—both managed and wild—that today anchors Vermont’s most iconic hiking experience. Importantly, however, hikers aren’t the only beneficiaries. Wildlife, especially wide-ranging species like moose and fisher, cannot thrive in isolation; they require linkages between conserved lands to find mates, food, and shelter, especially as they adapt to rising temperatures.”

Journey’s End joins other Northeast Wilderness Trust projects that demonstrate the organization’s commitment to wilderness conservation along trail corridors. Further east, the Wilderness Trust has protected more than 16,000 forever-wild acres adjacent to the Appalachian Trail. Along another popular footpath in southern New Hampshire, the Wapack Trail, the organization safeguards nearly 2,000 acres.

The Preserve will provide a sorely needed boost to Vermont’s wilderness acreage. Wilderness areas, also known as wildlands or ecological reserves, are places where Nature directs the ebb and flow of life and human influence is minimal. They offer well-established benefits to wildlife, human communities, and the climate, and yet just 4 percent of Vermont is protected as such. Bringing wilderness into balance with managed forests, farms, recreational lands, and human communities is a key objective of Northeast Wilderness Trust’s work, as well as a goal of Vermont Conservation Design, a statewide conservation framework that prioritizes the creation of ecological reserves like Journey’s End.

The Preserve’s former owners, Ted Vogt and Susan Shea, recognized the ecological and connectivity potential of their land early on. “I gained an appreciation for the beauty and environmental values of this land through my experiences as an end-to-ender on the Long Trail and as a Green Mountain Club volunteer,” said Vogt. “Twenty years ago I started to dream about protecting some of the lands around Journey’s End. Northeast Wilderness Trust has made that dream a reality.” Shea added: “We chose to work with the Wilderness Trust to conserve our land because of the organization’s forever-wild mission. There is very little old-growth forest in Vermont; with time this forest will become one.”

In fulfillment of Vogt and Shea’s dream for their land, and like all Northeast Wilderness Trust preserves, Journey’s End and its inhabitants are now forever-wild, never to be logged again. Two layers of legal protection secure a future of freedom for the Preserve: primary ownership by the Wilderness Trust and a conservation easement to be held by another land trust. This two-pronged strategy ensures that this wild addition to one of the Northeast’s premier wildlife corridors and the nation’s oldest long-distance hiking trail becomes tomorrow’s old-growth forest.