Cornwall Easement

Northeast Wilderness Trust holds a forever-wild easement on three Cornwall Conservation Trust Preserves totaling 375 acres.

In northwest Connecticut, the most forested region of the state, Cornwall Conservation Trust’s forever-wild preserves abut Mohawk State Forest and are just four miles from the Appalachian Trail. Headwaters of the Hollenbeck River originate here, and eight rare species have been catalogued on or near these Preserves. Northeast Wilderness Trust is honored to safeguard these beautiful forests with an easement that provides the freedom for them to become wilder forever—to once again become an ancient forest.

NEWT’s forever-wild easement safeguards the 200-acre Greyledge Preserve, 100-acre Nancy Nauts Dobbs Preserve, and 75-acre Red Mountain Preserve. Altogether, these three Preserves make up a 375-acre block of land.

Wilderness protection lets the land evolve naturally, free from intensive management. The forever-wild protection also enshrines access for people to enjoy the natural beauty of this land on foot. Approximately one mile of a spur trail of the Mohawk Trail runs through these lands, offering landscape views from a rocky outcrop on Red Mountain.

The two land trusts have been working together through the Wildlands Partnership program, an initiative of Northeast Wilderness Trust in collaboration with Sweet Water Trust and Wildlands & Woodlands. The Partnership engages local land trusts across New England and New York in forever-wild land conservation.

Cornwall Conservation Trust took this action in recognition of the environmental challenges of climate change and extinction of species through loss of habitat. NEWT’s Wildlands Partnership offers us an opportunity to ensure that Cornwall Conservation Trust’s protected forestland will never again be logged and will still allow people to enjoy nature.

Barton Jones, Board President, Cornwall Conservation Trust

Forever-wild places offer extensive benefits to humans and other-than-human beings alike. These include wildlife habitat, carbon storage and sequestration, clean water, resilience to storms and flooding, and places of solace for all.

Preserve photos by Harry White; hikers on Mohawk Trail by Sophie Ehrhardt