The “Hilltown” in our name refers to the nine westernmost towns of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, that is, Chesterfield, Cummington, Goshen, Huntington, Middlefield, Plainfield, Westhampton, Williamsburg and Worthington, plus the neighboring towns of Ashfield, Chester, Conway and Windsor, all a few miles west of the Connecticut River.
Since our founding in 1986 as a local, all-volunteer land trust, we’ve acquired 27 conservation restrictions (CRs) covering over 2,451 acres in seven of our thirteen towns, with more in the works to close in the next 12 months. We’ve also acquired and then sold to the state three agricultural preservation restrictions (APRs) on about 468 acres of Worthington (one of those towns) farmland. And we own six properties, two in Williamsburg on which we maintain hiking trails, two in Worthington wetlands which we plan to leave undisturbed, and two on the Huntington-Westhampton border totalling 379 acres on which we we are managing an eco-forestry project.
In the future, we see our work as continuing to fulfill our mission: to conserve active farmland and other “working” rural properties; to save native plant and wildlife habitats; to protect local watersheds; and to preserve the scenic and rural character of our Hilltowns.
What will change is how we do our work. We’re proud to have been an all-volunteer conservation group for so long. But as we’ve acquired more CRs, we’ve realized that the amount of time and effort needed to put together and monitor each one is more than a group of volunteers can manage alone.
So we have begun to move away from our historic all-volunteer model. We have joined with The Trustees of Reservations in a new partnership to double the pace of our conservation work and have hired Katie Theoharides as our first staff member, our part-time Executive Director. In this process, we will need a lot of help. If you would like to join the Hilltown Land Trust and support our work preserving the scenic and rural nature of our landscape, click here.
Thanks,
Wil Hastings, for all of us