Mount Grace Celebrates a Landmark Year

The end of 2024 came with a flurry of project closings, bringing a blockbuster year in land conservation to a close. As we look forward to another year filled with critical conservation work, we’d also like to take a moment to reflect on and celebrate the monumental land conservation projects that Mount Grace completed across central and western Massachusetts in 2024.

From sweeping landscape-scale initiatives to small but mighty community projects, 2024 has been a year of milestones.

Major Conservation Milestones

Last year, as in any year, no two chapters of Mount Grace’s conservation story were the same.

The year began with Mount Grace and Mass Audubon finalizing a project in Winchendon that protected over 1,000-acres of unfragmented woods and streams within the headwaters of the Miller River. As this project concluded, Mount Grace quickly turned its attention to another significant undertaking—the Hawes Hill Conservation Corridor in Barre, MA.

The Hawes Hill project was a chapter of Mount Grace’s story that took years to write. This collaborative, landscape-scale project in Barre stitched together a mosaic of biodiverse natural and working landscapes and protected 800+ acres of important wildlife habitat. “For five generations our family has been caretakers of the land,” Molly Stevens Dubois, whose family of farm owners protected four of the properties, said at a celebration of the project’s closing. “We value the importance of maintaining space as open fields and forests. Working with Mount Grace on this project has enabled us to ensure that the land is protected for the future generations of farmers.”

Other chapters in our 2024 conservation story were brief but still proved significant for the communities they served. In Royalston, Mount Grace protected 0.19 acres – one of our smallest projects to date – by partnering with the town to ensure that the site of the beloved Pete & Henry’s restaurant can be transformed into a town park. Thanks to the Town and the dedication of many committed volunteers, the site will continue to be a place where neighbors will gather for generations to come.

The final week of the year was a whirlwind of activity as we successfully completed three farm conservation projects to close out the year!

In Leyden, Mount Grace helped the Facey family protect 28 acres of land, connecting two already protected pieces of the Facey family's Bree-Z-Knoll dairy farm. We also helped protect a 70-acre farm in Orange and purchased 47 acres of woods and farmland in Montague Center.

Keeping up with projects like these is only possible thanks to the strength and generosity of the Mount Grace community. Thanks to the support of people like you, Mount Grace protected over 2,000-acres of land in 2024 alone. “The urgency of the conservation work we do is escalating in the face of increasing development pressures,” says Emma Ellsworth, Executive Director at Mount Grace. “Our little corner of North Central Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley is identified as containing over 100,000 priority acres for conservation. To meet our statewide conservation and biodiversity goals, we must conserve as much of this land as we can.”

Strategic Expansion and Future Plans

To address the growing challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and encroaching development, Mount Grace has developed a strategic plan to guide the organization over the next three years. This plan includes expanding staff capacity, enhancing people’s connection to the land, and further embracing land justice in conservation. We introduced the plan in 2024, and 2025 will mark our first full year of working toward achieving our goals.

“This is a great opportunity, yet it is also a responsibility,” says Ellsworth. “The issues we collectively face are daunting, and can make us feel powerless to change, but Mount Grace provides the opportunity to address them here, in our backyard. Projects like these, which you can support online now through the Mount Grace annual appeal, can be a model for new land conservation here and beyond.”