New Connections in Fairlee

A 60-acre addition to UVLT’s Ely Mountain Conservation Area advances important habitat connections in Fairlee. Efforts to conserve this land began several years ago when our study of regional habitat connectivity identified the Route 244 area near Hebbard Road as a potential priority for conservation.

The newly purchased land sits just south of Route 244, at the northern edge of a 6,000+acre interior forest block that extends well into Thetford. North of Route 244, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service owns 800 acres within a core habitat block of nearly 30,000 acres that spans parts of three towns.

Working with landowners Will Allen and Kate Duesterberg, UVLT arranged a boundary line agreement that brings our ownership at Ely Mountain to over 450 acres. The configuration was proposed by Will and Kate’s consulting forester Ehrhard Frost, who had been concerned that installing road improvements for harvesting timber was not practical and could cause damage to the steeply forested land and the long riparian corridor running through it.

UVLT manages the forest at the Ely Mountain Conservation Area for old growth characteristics and habitat function. At least one endangered bat species is known to use the area. The new addition adds a small amount of meadow and old pasture habitat as well as mixed hardwood and hemlock forest, protects headwater stream water quality by adding about 6,600 feet of stream frontage, and enhances climate resilience by strengthening the undeveloped connection between the two significant interior forest blocks that are divided by Route 244.

Funding for this purchase was provided by grants from The Nature Conservancy’s Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund and an anonymous foundation and through a private gift of Jamie Corsiglia. Will Allen and Kate Duesterberg also generously supported the transaction by selling the land for less than its appraised value.