When you’re a moose, bigger really is better. Especially when it comes to habitat. Your survival depends on lots of connected forest and wetlands. Room to roam, to feed, to find a mate.
The same is true for other creatures, from bobcats to bears and birds of all kinds. That’s why we’re celebrating the purchase of 91 acres of forest and wetland just north of the River~Link wildlife corridor, adjacent to Baker Forest.
River~Link is a permanently conserved natural area reaching from the Damariscotta River at Dodge Point west to the Schmid Preserve in Edgecomb and south down the Boothbay Peninsula. Forever forest.
Picture hushed hemlock groves with meandering streams, high ridges crowned with oaks, open meadows where beavers once engineered dams, porcupine dens along rugged rocky bluffs… and a trail more than five miles long connecting them all. River~Link gives a sense of the North Woods in our backyard, wildness in the midst of the increasingly developed peninsulas of the Midcoast.
The new property is known as the Tipping Rock Preserve. Its conservation was made possible by the on-going support of members like you, along with the generosity of Tom Arter, who sold it to us at a greatly discounted price.
That discount in turn attracted funding from the Maine Natural Resource Conservation Program (MNRCP) to support our purchase.
The Tipping Rock Preserve not only keeps wildlife corridors open, but it also includes prime habitat. Rich in wetlands and lush with forest, and varied in its topography, the property provides a broad range of conditions and microclimates.
This is especially important in view of a changing climate. It offers room for plant and animal populations to shift upslope, for example, or to a wetter or more shaded area if conditions in a given location are no longer suitable. And of course it provides all the good things that wetlands and forests do.
But we can’t stop here. With your help, we are working with local landowners to permanently conserve several more properties in the River~Link neighborhood, to make sure these habitats and natural connections remain whole.
