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Meet the new Executive Director of the Greater ...

After a thoughtful search, we are thrilled to announce that Erika Rowland has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Greater Lovell Land Trust. She brings two decades of experience in the Land Trust movement, great academic credentials including a PhD in forest resources from the University of Maine, an education program background, and extensive work on climate change issues at both a local and national level.

Meet the new Executive Director of the Greater Lovell Land Trust!
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Searching for North America's Tallest Surviving ...

I am picking my way through second growth forest in Lovell, in search of the tallest surviving American chestnut tree in North America. From the deep, well-drained soil, towering white pines, like masts on a clipper ship, reach toward the canopy. Muscular red oaks vie for space in the shaded woods. I alternate between craning my head upwards, searching for a glimpse of the chestnut’s distinctive white flowers, and scanning the forest floor for last year’s burs and dropped leaves. It’s here somewhere. Maybe this time I’ll find it…

Searching for North America's Tallest Surviving American Chestnut
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GLLT Announces Opening of Storybook Trail

We are tickled pink to introduce you to the newly installed Storybook Trail along the left hand loop at the Kezar River Reserve on Route 5 across from the Wicked Good Store…

GLLT Announces Opening of Storybook Trail
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Significant Fairies

We’d made promises in the recent past that fell flat. With that in mind, when the Greater Lovell Land Trust’s Nature Explorers, a homeschool group led by Docent Juli, gathered this morning, she was smart and stuck to the life cycles of potential sightings like frogs rather than possibilities…

Significant Fairies
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Happy Earth Day!

In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis) promoted Earth Day as a call to embrace environmental causes and fight the forces that were polluting and damaging our planet. By July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was inaugurated, with its mission to protect the environment and public health, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were signed into law, and a global awareness of the environmental movement was begun…

Happy Earth Day!

Land

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Tuesday Tracking is ON

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Tuesday Tracking is ON

I promised the Greater Lovell Land Trust‘s Tuesday Trackers that I’d let them know by 7am today if our adventure would actually take place because the forecasters were predicting a snow storm. We LOVE snow, but not when it ruins our plans.

And so at 6:43am, after checking various weather reports and TV stations for cancellations, whereupon I discovered that no school’s had cancelled, which seemed a sign that meant if the kids could go to school, we could go tracking, until I remembered that this is school vacation week and the kids weren’t going to school today anyway, I wrote to the 54-member group: “Weather reports state that the snow will start at 1pm in both Cumberland and Oxford Counties today, but in the hourly listing it shows snow showers at 10 and snow at 11.

I’m going to go for it in hopes that we can at least find some evidence of the porcupine and its visitors, but trust those of you who had intended to join me to make that old judgement call. Please don’t be afraid to back out.”

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October: The Month of the GLLT Kids, Part 4

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October: The Month of the GLLT Kids, Part 4

GLLT/Lovell Rec Trailblazers:

Six years ago we began working with Lovell Recreation to offer nature hikes one day a week for their summer campers. That blossomed into an after-school program three years ago. Typically, we offer five session in the fall, five in the winter, and three in the spring (many more after school activities available at that time of year.)

The group may be a bit loosey goosey because after being in school all day the kids have lots of energy to release, but we just keep changing up the activities.

This afternoon, Docents Alice Goodwin and Joan Lundin had a variety of activities up their sleeves (but no salamanders).

Activities included walking like different Maine mammals, Simon Says, Following unique trail blazes to reach their after-school snack, becoming tree masters, learning about survey rods, completing a leaf scavenger hunt, and finally ironing leaves between wax paper. Phew! No wonder we're all exhausted.

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October: The Month of the GLLT Kids, Part 3

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Molly Ockett School Maine Environmental Science Academy:

For many years, we’ve had a relationship with Molly Ockett School’s interdisciplinary 6-8th grade MESA program. This year has been no different and last month I co-led a walk along Hut Brook with Ed Poliquin from the Kezar Lake Watershed Association.

On Tuesday, October 15, 35 MESA students and their three teachers joined Brian Hammond and me to explore the fen.

Scavenger Hunt at Kezar River Reserve

Scavenger Hunt at Kezar River Reserve

As I walked along the trails of the Greater Lovell Land Trust’s Kezar River Reserve on Route 5 across from the Wicked Good Store today and thought about the fact that the Storybook Trail featuring Pond by Jim LaMarche will come down in another week or so, a brainstorm struck me. Why not create a scavenger hunt that you can download on your Smartphone and look for as you walk along the trail? Why not, indeed.