This panel will present a case study of the conservation of 2,100 acres of mountain forest lands owned by Middlebury College at its Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, Vermont. This project established the permanent protection of lands that provide multiple benefits for communities in the area and those downstream and along Lake Champlain including flood protection, water quality protection, habitat conservation, recreational use and carbon sequestration.
 
The project is the result of a multi-year effort that included conducting an ecological assessment of all 6,000 acres of land owned by Middlebury College, the formation of a partnership involving local towns, the US Forest Service, the Vermont Land Trust, and …This project also played an instrumental role in the College’s ten-year effort to achieve carbon neutrality.
 
Panelists include Nan Jenks Jay and Jack Byrne of Middlebury College, and Bob Heiser of the Vermont Land Trust. They will share the rich history of these lands prior to the conservation initiative and the motivations for permanently conserving them, how students and faculty were instrumental, the challenges of a multi-faceted partnership, the costs and benefits associated with putting land permanently into conservation, and how the carbon sequestration of these lands are being quantified and credited.
 
The panelists will highlight some of the more challenging issues encountered in this process by its multiple stakeholders, how they were addressed and resolved, and challenges of maintaining the conservation easement.
 

http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/2014/node/488112