Stewardship

Protecting and preserving our land

The heart of any land trust, including ours, is stewardship: taking good care of the land. It’s our responsibility, and it’s also our passion.

In many cases, stewardship means leaving things alone. In others, it means putting tool in hand and taking action.

How we care for our properties

Dedicated volunteers take care of Canton Land Conservation Trust (CLCT) properties in a number of important ways.

For example:

• Locating, marking, and monitoring boundaries
• Making and posting signs
• Building and maintaining trails
• Building bridges over creeks
• Clearing meadows of saplings or invasive plants that impair animal habitats
• Monitoring condition/status of our select few rustic buildings, and making minor repairs

When necessary stewardship activities exceed CLCT resources or capabilities, we contract outside professional services for manpower and equipment. This may include major building repairs, difficult tree takedowns, and forestry and habitat restoration.

Generally, our stewardship activities fall to volunteers from the community. Individually and in groups, they share their time, talents and efforts to help our land thrive.

The special role of individual stewards

We’re always looking for volunteers to act as stewards for trails and properties. This is an important role within the land trust.

Each steward adopts a trail, a set of trails, or a property to watch over on behalf of CLCT. They periodically assess the condition of the land, and when needed, suggest actions to protect or enhance it.