By Donna Perry
Staff Writer © 2001 Lewiston Sun Journal
Conservationists have rounded up $980,000 in
grants and private funds to negotiate a deal to protect 2,445
acres in the Hedgehog Hill area adjacent to Mount Blue State
Park.
And the Tumbledown
Conservation Alliance is closing in on its $300,000 private
fund-raising goal to match other grants with $24,000 needed to
meet Phase 1 by Dec. 31, Treasurer Gywn Sewall said.
Both efforts are part of an
overall project to protect more than 33,000 acres in the Mount
Blue State Park/ Tumbledown Mountain region. The alliance is
helping raise between $1.8 million overall in private money to
help match and leverage funds to conserve the property through
land buys or conservation easements at an overall cost of about
$8 million to $9 million.
The National Park Service
awarded the state a $310,000 grant of the $980,000 needed to
acquire the 2,445 acres in the Hedgehog Hill parcel in Weld and
Temple to be used for public recreation.
That property, located south
of the park, includes a 25-acre shrub marsh, a 180-acre deer
wintering yard, and a wading bird and waterfowl habitat along
Fran Brook.
The state has committed
$500,000 from the Land for Maine’s Future and the Maine
Outdoor Heritage Fund has awarded a grant of $83,638 to preserve
the Hedgehog Hill parcel, which is considered the first
acquisition of the Mount Blue/Tumbledown Mountain project. Other
funds were raised through private donations to conserve the
property that is considered among the most important and
threatened parcels in this initiative.
Each of the many properties
conservationists are working to preserve in the overall project
have multiple funding sources, said Jennifer Melville, project
manager for Maine Trust for Public Land.
The national nonprofit land
conservation organization is working on agreements for 19,400
acres and continuing to pursue other critical properties in the
region.
Sewall said the alliance has
$276,000 in pledges, including a $25,000 cap grant from an
anonymous donor if the group raises the remaining $24,000 in
private funding to meet the Phase 1 deadline. This phase targets
7,600 acres that surround Mount Blue State Park, including the
park’s entrance and existing multiuse trails and land
adjacent to the state campground on Webb Lake. Several private
charitable organizations have recently committed grants toward
the project, Sewall said.
As soon as members meet that
phase, Sewall said, they will move on to the next step to
continue private fund-raising to preserve 11,000 more acres that
include the tops of Tumbledown and Jackson mountains.
“We really have had,
despite the difficulties, a really heartwarming response,”
Sewall said.
People have been very generous
to support the network in their own way, she said.
“I think it’s
because it reaches into so many areas to touch people’s
lives whether it’s a logger, hiker or snowmobiler,”
Sewall said.