The Stewardship Program embodies our perpetual commitment to the lands we protect. The program incorporates two primary functions- conservation restriction oversight and conservation area management.  Together they work to show how active and responsible stewardship can provide long-term environmental and economic rewards.

Conservation Restriction Oversight

Our conservation restriction properties are protected lands owned by private individuals. 

Oversight includes baseline documentation to describe each property’s history, conservation values and resources, annual monitoring to ensure that the conservation values of the land are being protected forever, and landowner assistance to help owners of conserved properties find sustainable solutions to land management challenges.

Conservation Area Management

Conservation areas are lands Mount Grace owns.  Our 1,400 acres of land are open to the public for free for non-motorized recreational uses including hiking, nature study, and hunting (some donor based restrictions apply). 

Management components include: ecological planning, in which each property is inventoried for plant communities and wildlife (especially rare and threatened species) to develop a long term stewardship plan and is monitored to ensure its resources are protected; ecological restoration, which aims to identify and restore degraded ecosystems and critical habitat for rare and declining species; and sustainable forest management, in which our Stewardship Biologist works with a licensed consulting forester to develop long term forest stewardship plans that integrate biodiversity conservation with the sustainable harvest of forest products from our working forests.

If you have questions about the Mount Grace Stewardship Program, please contact Stewardship Biologist Tom Wansleben at 978-248-2055 x12 or wansleben(at)mountgrace.org.

For more stories about Mount Grace's stewardship work see:

Fox Valley Forest Stewardship

Paul Dunn Beetle Survey