The theme of the Brunswick-Topsham Land Belief’s 2022 annual report was “Rooted and Rising” – an ideal encapsulation of BTLT’s work over this previous yr.
We stay firmly rooted in our core mission of conservation and stewardship and deeply dedicated to our most established and beloved applications – the Farmers’ Market at Crystal Spring Farm, the Tom Settlemire Neighborhood Backyard, and naturally our path community. On the similar time, we’re rising to new challenges and looking for greater ranges of engagement with the complete vary of individuals in our neighborhood via partnerships just like the New Mainers Backyard, Mowita’nej Epijij (Wabanaki backyard), path accessibility initiatives, and extra.
Highlights of our conservation work in 2022 embrace over 50 acres on the Cathance River in Topsham, the Brannigan, Atwood, and Hideaway Farm properties. We’re grateful to the Atwood, Brannigan, and Sczymecki households, in addition to the City of Topsham, the Merrymeeting Bay Belief, the Davis Conservation Fund, John Sage Foundations, and over 70 particular person donors for making this work potential. With the extra of those parcels, BTLT has conserved greater than 1,100 acres and 43,000 ft of frontage on the Cathance over the previous three a long time.
We have been additionally delighted to work with the Eckert household to preserve the 21-acre Alan Eckert Protect, which incorporates 2,850 ft of shoreline abutting an intensive salt marsh on the head of Maquoit Bay in Brunswick. Along with conserving this land beloved by the late Alan Eckert, this mission represents a concrete step towards bettering the resiliency of our shoreline within the face of local weather change by creating house for marsh migration that may inevitably accompany rising sea ranges.
Our stewardship group has been busy with many tasks, together with re-routing path connections on the Cathance River Nature Protect. We count on these trails to reopen by summer season 2023. We additionally accomplished redesign of the paths at Bradley Pond Farm, which re-opened to the general public in September.
BTLT’s Stewardship group acquired a much-welcomed monetary enhance via a particularly beneficiant bequest from Wallace Pinfold, a long-time BTLT supporter who handed away this yr. We’ve got added the majority of Wallace’s bequest to our Stewardship Fund, which we’re persevering with to construct to make sure that we have now the monetary capability to satisfy our without end dedication to steward the lands we preserve.
This yr our engagement with Brunswick’s New Mainer neighborhood grew with the enlargement of gardening services on the BTLT workplace and the help of Michee Mpela to assist handle the backyard. As well as, BTLT facilitated the creation of a micro-farm on the Tom Settlemire Neighborhood Backyard the place Sivi Mpela is rising reasonably priced, recent, and culturally applicable meals for members of the New Mainer communities in Brunswick, Portland, and Lewiston-Auburn.
Making our trails open and out there to all members of our neighborhood has additionally been a precedence this yr. Our partnership with Queerly ME introduced scores of enthusiastic members of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood out for walks, nature actions, and neighborhood constructing on BTLT properties. As well as, we have now labored with Maine Coast Heritage Belief to create an accessible path at Woodward Level. The path is known as in reminiscence of one of many property’s longtime house owners, Andy Cook dinner, who conserved the property along with his spouse Jacki Ellis in 2019. When full Andy’s Path will present a flat, compact floor for guests who use a wheelchair, push a stroller, or just wish to commune with the property.
We’ve got additionally expanded our partnership with Independence Affiliation, a Brunswick-based non-profit that helps adults and kids with disabilities lead full and inclusive lives. Since 2019 workers and shoppers from Independence Affiliation have partnered with BTLT in clearing and sustaining trails at Crystal Spring Farm. In 2021 they added Neptune Woods, and in 2022 Androscoggin Woods to their upkeep checklist. We’re grateful for this partnership and stay up for seeing what new tasks we are able to discover collectively.
In November BTLT finalized a brand new five-year strategic plan, and its priorities additionally replicate our ambition to be a corporation that’s “Rooted & Rising.” The plan commits BTLT to the next priorities:
• Amplify our efforts to pursue new lands conservation tasks.
• Combine local weather change mitigation and adaptation extra explicitly in all our work, in keeping with the Local weather Motion Plan adopted for Maine.
• Combine Range, Fairness, and Inclusion practices into all our work, constructing on a dedication we made in April 2021 and on actions already underway.
• Develop youth environmental, outside, and nature-based training efforts.
• Interact in additional sustained advocacy efforts on vital points related with our mission.
• Proceed to construct the monetary and administrative capability to assist pursuit of those targets.
We’re pursuing quite a few initiatives to assist these targets and are assured we’ll have a lot progress to report by this time subsequent yr!
We thank all of our members and supporters for making the successes of 2022 potential. We stay up for 2023 and the probabilities that await us to preserve particular locations and join the folks of our area to them. Completely satisfied New 12 months!
Angela Twitchell is govt director of the Brunswick-Topsham Land Belief and Emily Swan is the president.
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