Stewardship is the on-going, long-term commitment of time and resources to the conservation of land, and its implementation is essential to RRCT’s ability to protect land in the future.
A major component of land trust stewardship includes annually ensuring that the terms of conservation easements are met, and helping landowners meet those terms. On land that we own, stewardship also entails managing invasive plants, maintaining trails and public access, developing property management plans, and ensuring that ongoing land uses do not jeopardize the ecological integrity of the landscape.
In all of these endeavors, RRCT’s Stewardship program welcomes the time and energy of volunteers. RRCT’s Trail Crew is a key effort to coordinate many volunteers, working together on key trails.
RRCT strives to practice exemplary stewardship of its lands, always protecting ecological values and when appropriate and feasible, inviting compatible human uses. Important components of our stewardship program includes development of a local land ethic, community involvement, outreach programs, and a focus on the quality of each visitor’s experiences at our preserves. Our organization also focuses on advocacy and programming for the stewardship of water resources and more.
Funding for land stewardship efforts comes in part from donations from members, and in part through our commitment to long-term Stewardship Reserve Funds — including our small endowment. With each land acquisition, by policy, we set aside funding to add to long-term Stewardship Reserve Funds.
RRCT Ownership:
RRCT has conserved more than 4500 acres since 1988. Our various conservation successes include a wide range of deeds and project structures, especially fee simple ownership (RRCT-owned preserves), conservation easements, assistance on state or local conservation acquisitions, and trail easements.
Our success since 1988 include 7 RRCT-owned preserves totaling 700 acres; creation or expansion of 7 town-owned preserves (RRCT assists); help in 7 state-owned state park and wildlife area expansions (RRCT assists); and creation of 60 RRCT conservation easements including 7 working farm conservation easements.
We describe and publish information on our ownership in several different formats
- Preserves & Trails & Farms web pages: Our most prominent RRCT web pages have an intended audience of the general public, hikers, neighbors, and others providing best-possible public information on trail networks, outdoor destinations, or conserved landscapes irrespective of RRCT’s role. On each preserve or destination webpage, we typically describe RRCT’s history or ownership with respect to any property.
- Excel Spreadsheet of all RRCT data (simplified, last updated 11/1/2019): Or here is the same data in Adobe PDF. This spreadsheet is a comprehensive inventory of all RRCT title interests.
- State Conservation Lands MEGIS (all RRCT data, last updated 8/1/2019): RRCT publishes the entirety of RRCT’s deeded interests as a state data set. The map viewer in this link shows all of RRCT’s deeds on a map in relation to other conservation lands in the region.
- All RRCT deeded interests in KMZ format (last updated 8/1/2019): This data is very similar to the MEGIS data above. To view in this format you will need to have — or download a free version of — Google Earth in order to be able to view this file.
- RRCT’s Saving Land web page: RRCT’s web page “Saving Land” gives details on our active projects and our most-recently closed projects, providing information more recent than MEGIS or KMZ files above. Similarly, we provide some additional year-to-year historical information of non-deed partnerships on our conservation successes on our Organizational History web page.
Please contact us with any requests for most-recent information, or more detailed information or tables on our conservation files.
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