The Corner Report

Housatonic Valley Association Executive Director Lynn Werner and Trust for Public Land's Litchfield Hills Greenprint Director Tim Abbott

By Gale Courey Toensing
KENT, Conn. _ Tim Abbott brought a message of hope Friday to those who adore the Litchfield County landscape and want to protect it: It can be done, Abbott said.

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Abbott, the recently appointed director of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint project, was introduced to the community at a reception at the Fife and Drum Restaurant. The event was co-sponsored by the Housatonic Valley Association and the Trust for Public Land, partners in the innovative project that will help provide a comprehensive conservation vision for the Northwest Corner, and the resources to implement it.

“It’s easy to get people concerned when you talk about rural sprawl, when you point to (the development in) the south, and then realize you don’t have to point south because the change is diffused around us,” Abbott said.

“I could talk about forest pests, and pathogens and the invasive species that could take over the forest. But I was to talk about hope, because that’s what the Greenprint project is about. It’s saying it isn’t too late, but it is right now. It’s an opportunity for us to make a profound difference in how our communities will be and in the ecological health of this landscape for a long time to come. It’s a choice people throughout Litchfield County are prepared to make that’s an act of faith and an act of hope,” Abbott said.

The greenprint project aims to create a regional conservation vision. Greenprints involve community leaders, conservation professionals, town and state officials and the public in identifying the most important and most vulnerable lands to protect.

The greenprint uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify important natural landscapes, land use patterns, already protected lands and patterns of development. This part of the project is called the Living Map Project and is hosted by the Housatonic Valley Association and the Trust for Public Land.

The Litchfield Hills Greenprint also will create opportunities to protect land during the development process, and to find new sources of funding for land protection in the county. The goal is to increase the acreage of protected land through land purchases, easements and donations.

Abbott’s words were warmly welcomed by the 60 or so environmentally inclined guests who attended the reception. Among them were Kent First Selectwoman Ruth Epstein and state Sen. Andrew Roraback (R-Goshen), who is an active supporter of land preservation at the state legislature.

“It has been said the only thing we take with us when we go is what we leave behind and I think we’re gathered here in a collective effort to be sure that what we leave behind is something we enjoyed in our lifetimes,” Roraback said.

Eliot Wadsworth, the owner of Litchfield’s famous White Flower Farm and a passionate supporter of the Greenprint project, explained the plan.

“The idea behind the Litchfield Hills Greenprint is very simple. It is that the problem we face in protecting our land is larger than an individual community, larger than portions of the region, larger than the regional and individual community land trusts. This is a case where being independent is no longer going to work. We’re going to have to work together,” Wadsworth said.

The purpose of Greenprint is to provide a center of intellectual services to make this battle go in the right direction by providing a technological base mapping system so that all of the data is available to help people understand the trends unfolding in the next town and the next county, Wadsworth said.

"The Trust for Public Land and Housatonic Valley Association bring the combinion of legal and technical resources in the state’s work, for title work, bonding legislation to help communities raise the money. The folks who are participating in the greenprint – all the communities, all the individual land trusts – can tap into that. The crucial insight here is that the greenprint is not trying to become a new creative leader. The greenprint is a service organization,” Wadsworth said.

For more information about the Litchfield Hills Greenprint contact Werner at 860-672-6678 or visit www.hvathewatershedgroup.org or www.tpl.org.