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| Part of the easement donated by Dr. Lucy Waletzky in Pocantico Hills. |
If you've ever driven along Route 448 in Pocantico Hills, past the Rockefeller State Park Preserve, past the Stone Barns Center, past the Union Church, with its stained-glass by Chagall and Matisse, you're familiar with one of those iconic local landscapes that virtually everyone wishes would never change.
You'll be happy to know, then, that most of what you see along that road will never change. Well over a thousand acres is protected as parkland or by conservation easement.
For the most recent protection project, we can thank Dr. Lucy Waletzky, who has donated a conservation easement to Westchester Land Trust that will protect 25 acres bordering the Rockefeller preserve and with frontage on 448.
Dr. Waletzky is the chair of the New York State Council of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and is the daughter of the late Laurance S. Rockefeller. She's a fervent supporter of land protection, and her conservation easement follows four others that Rockefeller family members have donated to Westchester Land Trust. In all, they've protected 115 acres through conservation easements with us.
We completed Dr. Waletzky's easement at the end of 2007, which was a busy time. We also completed:
- 48-acre easement on Guard Hill Road in Bedford, donated by Bob and Beth Mancini.
- 58-acre easement on the North Salem Open Land Foundation's Gaymark Preserve.
- 7.6-acre easement on Eastwoods Road in Pound Ridge, donated by Ronald and Georgia Frasch (this easement is down the road from the new 48-acre Eastwoods Preserve, which the Town of Pound Ridge and Westchester Land Trust bought in November of ‘07).
Come spring, we hope to have the opening of a new preserve that spans the border of Yorktown and Putnam Valley. Eugene Danner donated the land to us. One corner abuts the new Donald Trump State Park, and at 28 acres, it will make an ideal place for short hikes.
Also as the year ended, Michael Rothenberg gave us 1.2 acres in Cortlandt. Although small, the land links other undeveloped properties that form a corridor listed as a priority in the town's open space plan.
Among other projects in 2007, we completed a conservation easement with Bedford Audubon, to protect its 200-acre James Ramsey Hunt Preserve; and we worked with New York State, Westchester County, the Town of Somers, and the Watershed Agricultural Council to buy the development rights to Stuart's Fruit Farm, in Granite Springs, allowing that long-time family farm to remain in business.
All in all, it was a great year for land preservation. To all of our land donors, we send out our sincerest thanks.