2009 Annual Report

The Keeler Preserve in North Salem on a winter afternoon.

Our 2009 Annual Report is out,  with plenty of details about our land preservation work. The first section is below, and you can see a PDFof the whole thing here.

There are many ways to measure land preservation success. You can add up the total number of acres. You can count the number of projects, or evaluate the quality of the land. You can list the number of communities you’ve worked in. You can estimate the new recreation opportunities you’ve created.

By all of those criteria, 2008-2009 was a good year for Westchester Land Trust, and by some it was a great year.

Working with numerous partners in different capacities, we helped complete 20 projects, protecting 601 acres in eight communities.

The 20 projects were the most we completed since 2005. They included agricultural land, watershed protection land, land that provides access to Long Island Sound, and land with trails.

Fourteen of the 20 projects were conservation easements. They included our biggest easement ever from an individual, two easements each on land owned by Bedford Audubon Society and the North Salem Open Land Foundation, and even two easements on our own land that we gave to Bedford Audubon.

This year we asked photographer Jack Goldberg, of South Salem, to take a series of photos for us that emphasis the seasons. Two dozen or so of the best are displayed here in our 2008-2009 Annual Report. And in keeping with the theme, we’d like to review our year season by season.