Welcome to the Hilltown Land Trust!

The public trail at the Stevens Property in Huntington is open! Please visit the Stevens Property page for more information and a trail map.

Upcoming Events

Visit the Events page for more information

Moonlight Hike
Saturday, February 27th, 7pm
Williamsburg

Strategies for Success with State Conservation Grants
Tuesday, February 23rd, 7pm
Goshen Town Hall
Learn about conservation grant programs.

Your Land, Your Choices... Your Wallet
Wednesday, March 31st, 7-9pm
Stanton Hall, Huntington
Timber harvesting, Chapter 61 enrollment and conservation.

Ongoing Events

Spring and Fall are monitoring time for the Hilltown Land Trust. We monitor each of the conservation restrictions we hold every year to make sure that the terms of the restriction are being met. A monitoring visit generally consists of a short visit with the landowner followed by a walk around the property, on which we take pictures. On our visit to Paul Strasburg's property in the Fall of 2008, he turned the camera back on us!
 

Welcome to our website! The “Hilltown” in our name refers to the nine westernmost towns of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, a few miles west of the Connecticut River.

Since our founding in 1986 as a local, all-volunteer land trust, we’ve acquired 23 conservation restrictions (CRs) covering over 2,100 acres in five of our nine towns, with at least two more in the works to close in 2009. We’ve also acquired and then sold to the state three agricultural preservation restrictions (APRs) on about 468 acres of Worthington (one of those towns) farmland. And we own six properties, two in Williamsburg on which we maintain hiking trails, two in Worthington wetlands which we plan to leave undisturbed, and two on the Huntington-Westhampton border totalling 379 acres on which we we are managing an eco-forestry project.

In the future, we see our work as continuing to fulfill our mission: to conserve active farmland and other “working” rural properties; to save native plant and wildlife habitats; to protect local watersheds; and to preserve the scenic and rural character of our Hilltowns.

What will change is how we do our work. We’re proud to have been an all-volunteer conservation group for so long. But as we’ve acquired more CRs, we’ve realized that the amount of time and effort needed to put together and monitor each one is more than a group of volunteers can manage alone.

So we have begun to move away from our historic all-volunteer model. In this process, we will need a lot of help. If you would like to join the Hilltown Land Trust and support our work preserving the scenic and rural nature of our landscape, click here.

Thanks,

Wil Hastings, for all of us