Funding interns to help save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation in Newtown
Leader
Michael Dylag
Location
55 Great Hill Rd. Newtown, CT 06470
The Newtown Forest Association (NFA) is the largest private landowner in Newtown Connecticut. We are dedicated to preserving forests, agricultural lands, nature preserves, watersheds and other open space in Newtown for the ongoing benefit of the flora and fauna of present and future residents of our town. Our properties encompass meadows, old-growth forests, streams, and lakes. The vision of the NFA is to be a driving force for maintaining the rural character of Newtown through the acquisition, preservation, and stewardship of open space of all kinds. We protect over 1,300 acres of land in more than 90 separate parcels. Because we are a private, not-for-profit land trust, and we are independent of town, state, or Federal governments, and we rely primarily on private giving of our donors and members.
Our mandate as a land trust, is that each and every one of our properties has a baseline accounting of its physical properties, and a land management plan to ensure its future conservation values that we promise to steward and protect in perpetuity. Stewardship, in its broadest sense, includes working to maintain or improve the ecological processes and functions of the landscape.
The NFA’s accreditation by the Land Trust Alliance, mandates that each of our properties be inspected every year to confirm compliance with its land management plan. However, nature is very dynamic and the land is always changing. It is our responsibility to control invasive plants, acts of nature such as blowdown, erosion, implement trail maintenance, and most importantly, stop encroachments from our many neighbors. To that end, we employ summer interns to maintain and improve our properties. Generally, we hire high school and college-age individuals. In the past, our interns have primarily performed maintenance, but this coming summer, we’d like to expand the program to include some improvement projects such as clearing old New England stone fences of invasive plants and building and maintaining new and existing hiking and biking trails.
Newtown has a rich history of rural and farming life, and it is quickly being overtaken by new residential and commercial expansion. The NFA is doing what it can to preserve our heritage, and protect it for future generations. Protecting land in Newtown is itself a worthy cause, but we also feel that by bringing on more interns to assist us in this important mission, we are also grooming future generations to be passionate about land preservation and stewardship.