NORTHEAST WILDERNESS TRUST
17 STATE STREET, SUITE 302
MONTPELIER, VT 05602
802.224.1000
HOW WE WORK
Step 1: Identify
Northeast Wilderness Trust works with partner organizations and landowners to evaluate land for wilderness conservation. We use the best available science to prioritize land based on its ecological value, climate resilience, and other factors.
Step 2: Protect
We work, and often fundraise, to conserve the landscape as forever-wild using a variety of conservation tools.
Step 3: Commit
Once protected, our promise is to allow the land to rewild and flourish on its own terms. We commit to freedom for the land, its creatures, and the processes that create integrity, beauty, and diversity in the natural world.
Step 4: Forever Wild
As the only land trust focused exclusively on wilderness conservation across the Northeast, each and every landscape we protect today will become an old-growth forest of tomorrow.
Forever-wild conservation
is about freedom…
…for wildlife, natural processes, and the untrammeled evolution of the landscape. This sort of conservation offers land the opportunity to heal and rewild, often after centuries of hard use. In a wild landscape, trees grow old and store massive amounts of carbon. Trees also fall and remain in place, providing shelter to diverse species and adding richness back into forest soils.
On forever-wild land, management is minimal to non-existent. Light restoration may occur at the beginning phases of conservation. Recreation, when permitted, is limited to quiet enjoyment of the land without any motors or mechanization. There is no timber harvesting, in perpetuity.
The many gifts offered by untamed forests inevitably spill over into the human world. People receive pristine water, birdsong, fresh air, spring flowers, dark nighttime skies, snowy tracks, and quiet places to escape the clamor of everyday life. Stepping into the wild, we can feel that land does not belong to us, but that we belong to the land.
The Wilderness Trust uses two main tools
to protect land…
…conservation easements (also known as conservation restrictions) and fee land ownership. The Wilderness Trust accepts donations of land and easements and in some cases acquires land through a bargain-sale or outright purchase.
The Wilderness Trust also often partners with other land trusts to add forever-wild protections to properties they own. Our Wildlands Partnership offers land trusts an easy, revenue-generating option to pursue forever-wild conservation in conjunction with wild carbon credits.
Conservation projects take time, effort, and resources. Interested landowners are encouraged to contact Northeast Wilderness Trust early in the process of developing a conservation plan. Depending on the situation, transaction due diligence may include surveys, appraisal, title searches, and environmental assessments. Site visits are needed for baseline documentation, and a management plan may be required.
If you or your land trust are interested in protecting a property as wilderness, please call 802.224.1000 or send us an email.
SAVE THIS LAND
Help make new wilderness a reality in your backyard! We are fundraising to protect and rewild these special places right now. Your support will secure and safeguard forever-homes for wildlife and nature.
Climate Change & Wilderness
Right here in the Northeast, we can make a difference for the future of our climate and environment simply by allowing more forests to capture and store their full potential of carbon. At this critical moment of climate chaos, protecting wildlands—now—is a courageous act of hope.
Wildlands Partnership
Northeast Wilderness Trust is working to dramatically accelerate the pace of regional wilderness conservation through our Wildlands Partnership. Partner land trusts receive funding to protect land as forever-wild, and may enroll wildlands in the carbon market through the Partnership to receive additional, unrestricted income with little risk.