Workshop Explores Environmental Partnership

By Kendra Bobowick

For the sake of the environment, Bill Toomey has blurred town lines, replacing them with partnerships. Director of Highstead in Redding and a Sandy Hook resident, Mr Toomey explained: neighboring towns’ landowners likely share similar problems, opportunities, challenges, and various towns’ land trusts like the Newtown Forest Association (NFA) want to work with the landowners to approach their properties “in a sustainable way,” he said.

In answer, his organization has deliberately reached beyond its boundaries. Trading in the identity as “Redding’s best kept secret,” he said of Highstead, “We’re trying to get more public.” Originally an arboretum with a small membership, he said, “We made a shift.” Since then, “the level of activity has exploded.”

Caught up in the Highstead’s surge of outreach, the NFA is now part of Fairfield County Regional Conservation Partnership — one of many new multitown alliances.

“I am excited,” said NFA President Bob Eckenrode. “We’re not talking about places that are hidden, It’s places we see every day.” The panorama visible from Queen Street offering a view of hills, meadows, a faraway horizon interrupted by rooftops at Fairfield Hills; the view from Castle Hill looking down on steeples, the flagpole, and Main Street cutting a line through the tree cover.

Mr Toomey said this week, “We wanted to work collaboratively, [groups] doing more together than each alone.” By bringing the land trusts, municipalities, and landowners together, he sees a stronger front to conserve the environment, habitat, woodlands, watercourses, meadows, and a “natural heritage,” as stated in one recent press release. Together towns can “do what they do more effectively,” he said.

Mr Eckenrode added, “This partnership also provides a regional forum to discuss issues that we as stewards of open space and directors of land trusts encounter on a daily basis,” from management to financial planning to legal assistance, he said. The responsibility is shared to preserve natural resources in perpetuity, “which we all know is a very long time.”

The Workshop

Mr Eckenrode is among residents including Mr Toomey who are now looking forward to Saturday, October 24. The day welcomes larger property owners in Newtown — ten acres or more — to a workshop related to the NFA’s past months of work with its new partnership incorporating conservation commissions, land trusts, and stewardship organizations in Bethel, Brookfield, Danbury, Redding, and Ridgefield. The workshop will meet at the C.H. Booth Library from 9 am to noon.

They arrived at an awareness: “We all need to better understand how to manage our properties for the ongoing health and diversity of our lands and wildlife habitat,” the release states. Addressed to landowners and inviting them to the weekend workshop, the release reads, “You will meet with other landowners from our area who are interested in the future stewardship of their properties and our environment.” In addition to guest speakers and a conservation workshop discussing land management issues, “the event will explore various means to better utilize and conserve properties.”

For information or to confirm participation in the Fairfield County Conservation Partnership’s Landowner’s Workshop, contact info@highstead.net.

From The NFA

Mr Eckenrode said, “I think the importance of what we are trying to accomplish is that private and public property owners have a shared responsibility to maintain the health of our natural resources and environment within our communities. Engaging landowners that are our neighbors and sharing our stewardship information and property maintenance techniques with them is something we consider to be of value to maintaining the local environment within our community.”

He added, “Protecting water quality, forest health, meadow management, and enhancing wildlife habitat are issues we as responsible property owners need to be proactive in maintaining now and in the future. This partnership effort is the foundation for doing this on a regional basis.”

Noting the meadows and streams, agricultural fields and forest areas, he said, “These are the places within our community and in our neighborhoods that need management and oversight to ensure their health and viability ... municipalities, private landowners , and land trusts working together to achieve these goals will go along way in ensuring these resources and properties remain healthy and viable for future generations.”

He explained that the Newtown Forest Association is Newtown’s largest private landowner, and has a role to play by preserving and maintaining the health of its properties and sharing its efforts with town officials and surrounding regional land trusts.

“Land conservation options for the private landowner are equally important in adding to our town’s open spaces and rural character,” he said. Mr Eckenrode hopes to gain “a better understanding of our role as stewards of open space in our community and how that relates to efforts in surrounding town’s in our region,” he said. “Our natural world of plants, trees, animals, water, and wildlife habitat does not recognize man’s boundaries. As a result, our actions and intentions do affect our neighbors in Newtown and regionally.” The NFA can “lead by example with the stewardship efforts we have undertaken locally and share that with private property owners, town officials, and regional partnership members,” he said.

“As property owners and land managers, we are all connected to the land. What we do there does affect our health,” he added. “Each landowner in town can actively manage their property to the benefit of wildlife, open spaces, and water quality.”