2021 Annual Report

Not only is Erickson Fields Preserve in Rockport a great place to take a hike, it’s also a source of food for folks in the Midcoast. Members of our Teen Ag Crew and staff at Erickson Fields Preserve worked with volunteers to grow, harvest, and distribute more than 22,000 pounds of food to local hunger relief organizations in 2021.

A lot has changed over the past couple of years, but, as Aldermere Farm and Erickson Fields Preserve Manager Heidi Baker says, “Cows don’t care about pandemic protocols.” Once again, baby Belted Galloways filled the barnyard and pastures last spring and, after a year hiatus, members of the Midcoast community were able to join us in-person for Calf Unveiling Day to celebrate spring and the baby Belties.

Protecting Maine’s salt marshes—including the lands surrounding them that will become marsh as sea level rises—is a priority in our effort to make Maine more resilient to climate change. To help us better understand how Maine salt marshes are responding to sea-level rise, Bates College students collected marsh core samples at Cousins River Fields and Marsh in Yarmouth, a property that will be officially purchased and transferred to MCHT in 2022.

Legislative leaders from both parties and Governor Janet Mills joined together to approve a four-year, $40 million Land for Maine’s Future (LMF) appropriation. MCHT co-led this effort and, in the coming years, land trusts, state agencies, and communities will be able to conserve dozens of publicly accessible natural areas, as well as working farms, forests, and waterfronts throughout Maine with these funds. Pictured here is the Height of Land property conserved by Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust with LMF support in 2007.

In 2017, MCHT’s Ciona Ulbrich (right) and Penobscot resident Bailey Bowden (left) began to work on a plan to restore fish passage for alewives in the Bagaduce River Watershed. Over the next five years, working with numerous partners, MCHT co-led the effort to install five nature-like fishways, bringing back thousands of the ecologically important sea-run fish. The final fishway project was completed in 2021, making the Bagaduce the first fully restored watershed for fish passage in the state of Maine.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of its former owner, who gifted the island to us, Enchanted will become our eleventh island preserve in the waters off of Stonington—an archipelago of over 50 islands beloved by boaters and paddlers the world over. Enchanted Island was first protected through a conservation easement (a legal agreement to limit development) 15 years ago. Now it’s available for people to land on and enjoy.

We’re deeply grateful to long-time volunteers like Tom Carr, who helped MCHT steward Amanda Devine with just about everything on our Midcoast preserves in 2021. One day while trail building, Tom took down a rotten leaning tree and shrimp-sized grubs came tumbling out of the hollow main trunk!

Freeport-based Maine Beer Company gave $50,000 to help protect Casco Bay’s Little Whaleboat Island (officially conserved in November of 2021) and a couple of months later released a beer by the same name to help raise awareness for MCHT’s mission. Cheers to a new public preserve in Casco Bay!

Through the conservation of a 1,700-acre property known as Schoodic Forest, we made significant progress in our effort to protect one of the last places on the Eastern Seaboard where wildlife can roam to and from rocky shores and inland woods seeking food and refuge. Large-scale conservation becomes increasingly important in a changing climate, as animals and plants will require broad swaths of land to move within to find food, water, and shelter as temperatures warm.