The Rewards of Long-Term Stewardship

With spring comes melting snow and ice, warm temperatures and longer days. Changes in the natural world are either sudden explosions or sneak quietly under our radar when we don’t notice. As the newsletter writing begins, ice is still on the lake but open water grows every day. I’m looking forward to the warmth and activity of the spring and summer after the quiet of winter.

We’ll be conducting stewardship reviews in a number of different ways this year. As the CLCF has done periodically in the past, we will be contracting with the Society for the Protection of NH Forests to gather aerial imagery of land in the Chocorua Lake Basin. This saves time on boundary walks for some properties and gives us a snapshot of changes to the landscape. Following land trust best practices, we’ll use the imagery, in addition to communications with landowners, to document these reviews. Though the imagery will be a useful time saver, the best part about annual stewardship reviews is the opportunity to reconnect with landowners!

Bill Mayer, a longtime property owner in the basin, offered to share some brief comments about his connections to his family’s land and his experience with stewardship. I appreciate his thoughtful words and hope you will as well.  Thanks, Bill!

From Bill Mayer:

“My family has enjoyed Chocorua and the basin for almost 100 years, even before my grandparents bought the Pratt Cottage on Washington Hill in 1923. Since that time, Chocorua has been the site of weddings, birthdays, burials, and countless reunions of a family which has grown exponentially from its original geographically dispersed military core. It has been and will continue to be “the tie that binds” us.

“So perhaps it is no surprise that the Pratt family celebrates CLC’s practice of ensuring that our property is preserved through regular stewardship review of our conservation easement. Thanks to the diligent and expert efforts of Lynne Flaccus, we have learned more about the property we are so privileged to own, in a place that we love. Through Lynne, the CLC has been a terrific source of information on the natural aspects of the property: plants, trees, wildlife, relevant geological features, remnants of old buildings, past use, etc. Moreover, a stewardship visit is a recurring reminder of what a beautiful place we are privileged to own, and represents a reaffirmation of the value and importance of our properties by those equally devoted to Chocorua.

“Regular stewardship review is also especially important for a property such as ours, which is owned by a family that has become so large and dispersed over the years. It is our assurance that new generations understand the importance of preservation and, as necessary, maintenance and repairs. A visit also draws attention to changes that may bear on conservation and preservation, and provides assurance of sensitivity to these values in the future.

“Many property owners in the basin and the surrounding protected areas may not know about the conservation easements or covenants on their properties, or perhaps have forgotten that they exist. For some of the reasons referred to above, the covenants and easements, with associated stewardship review, represent a valuable property asset. Most importantly if CLC conservation easements become a comprehensive reality for all Chocorua landowners—and we are assuredly moving in that direction—we can all rest assured that our special place will be preserved in perpetuity for future generations.”