Older growth forests like Hunter’s Woodlot in Bristol represent a key carbon storage resource.
Editor’s note: Climate Strategy and Conservation Fellow Tahlia Mullen worked with us from January through August of this year as she prepared for graduate school. She created this piece as a look-back on Coastal Rivers’ conservation successes in 2022. We look forward to sharing a recap of our 2023 projects in the new year!
Intact forests and wetlands offer low-tech solutions to climate change
by Tahlia Mullen
Given the generally sullen mood of discourse around climate change right now, you might expect our communications on the issue to be seeped with bad news. After all, our work as a conservation organization requires us to be acutely aware of the environmental challenge we are up against. Yet our recent conservation successes give us reasons to be hopeful.
Thanks to the generous support of our membership and donors, combined with the hard work of our staff and board, the land trust acquired an additional 840 acres of publicly accessible land in 2022. We are effectively doubling our rate of conservation, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
This positive trend in conservation couldn’t come at a more critical time. With the midcoast area under threat from myriad environmental stressors, among them sea level rise, extreme weather events, and changes to biodiversity, our communities could face new challenges to human health and society, the economy, and local ecology. How we manage natural resources matters now more than ever before for the present and future welfare of our friends and neighbors.
We like to wax lyrical at Coastal Rivers about the many benefits of land conservation, from improvements to local water quality, to broader wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and education. Increasingly today, we’re considering how land conservation can help communities adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
This past year of land conservation brings with it new opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Consider the role of carbon sequestration and storage. With the average CO2 concentration in Earth’s atmosphere over 50% above pre industrial levels, and CO2 having a half life of about 120 years, reducing our current and future greenhouse gas emissions is insufficient to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Something needs to be done about carbon already in the atmosphere.
A variety of companies and research organizations across the globe are piloting complex and expensive carbon capture and storage technology. Meanwhile, forests and wetlands do this naturally, capturing carbon through photosynthesis and storing it as biomass for years to come. That is one of the reasons we were thrilled to conserve the Half Moon Pond Conservation Area in Bristol at the end of March 2022. These 484 acres of forest and wetlands represent the largest single day purchase in the land trust’s history. Their conservation ensures the land will continue to draw carbon out of the atmosphere and prevent further absorption of solar radiation.
At the same time, conserving Hunter’s Woodlot in Bristol (pictured at top) in October of last year helps protect a key parcel for carbon storage. The 23-are property hasn’t been logged in over 70 years and possesses old growth characteristics uncommon for our region. With the power to store more carbon per acre than younger forests, older growth forests like Hunter’s Woodlot represent a key carbon storage resource.
Strategic land conservation can also help ensure the availability of climate buffers, which are undeveloped lands that can act as barriers to physical climate threats. With developed areas in our region at greater risk for flooding and storm surge, providing water a space to flow and a permeable surface to drain remains a key strategy to protect homes and businesses. By conserving the 125-acre Wild Lily Preserve in Bremen last December, we are also protecting the buffer potential for over 1100 feet of shoreline along Lake Pemaquid.
Similar to climate buffers, the localized cooling effect of undeveloped land helps to mitigate increased temperatures brought on by both climate change and development. The 10-acre addition to Castner Brook Community Forest in Damariscotta in June of 2022 not only contains wetlands and significant frontage along Castner Brook that could act as future climate buffers, the property also abuts the site of a future nursing home, where residents could benefit from the cooling effect over summer temperatures.
Finally, provided the ongoing threats to biodiversity from both climate change and continued human development, protecting wildlife habitat remains essential to mitigating the worsening biodiversity crisis. That is why Coastal Rivers considers connectivity a guiding principle of its land conservation. By conserving parcels that connect to existing parcels, the land trust encourages development of wildlife corridors – conservation areas that support a greater number and diversity of native species. We purchased an additional 130 acres in Newcastle in 2022 with connectivity in mind, adding to the approximately 3,000 acre River~Link corridor connecting Newcastle to Boothbay.
The connectivity principle also guided the campaign and successful purchase of the 14-acre tip of Plummer Point in South Bristol in November 2022. The peninsula, which sits at the entrance to Seal Cove, is home to seals, fish, and clams, as well as wading and migratory birds. Now a 71-acre preserve, with an additional 16-acre conservation easement just adjacent, conservation of the entire Plummer Point Peninsula helps to protect a biodiversity hotbed from the combined pressure that climate change and development place on local ecology.
Having acquired 10 new properties in 2022, along with two tradelands and one conservation easement , the properties described above provide only a snapshot from this past year of lands projects. There is no golden ticket for what land we prioritize for conservation just as there is no one reason we pursue this work generally. But in the same way that love of nature and community have guided our past operations, those values continue to shape our vision of the organization for the years ahead.
Tahlia Mullen served as Coastal Rivers’ first-ever Climate Strategy and Conservation Fellow, a position she helped create. A native of South Bristol and Lincoln Academy alum, she graduated from Dartmouth College in 2022 with a degree in Government and Environmental Studies. Tahlia is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Environmental Policy at Edinburgh University.
