Mount Percival Neighborhood Gathering and Informational Session

Hello fellow Northporters,

As you may know, Coastal Mountains Land Trust recently acquired a beautiful 71-acre parcel of land in Northport, that includes the summit of Mount Percival. As a land conservation organization dedicated to protecting places of high scenic and ecological value in this community, Coastal Mountains Land Trust has named this property the Mount Percival Preserve and will permanently steward it for ecological protection and public access.

As a neighbor to the Mount Percival Preserve, we thought you might like to know a little bit about who we are, what we do, and what our plans are for this new Preserve. As such, we would like to invite you to attend a neighborhood gathering and information session to be held at the Mount Percival Preserve on Tuesday, May 11th at 5:30pm, at which we hope to further introduce the Land Trust to the community and to answer any questions that you might have. The plan will be to meet at the Preserve along Bluff Road. We will have a temporary Land Trust sign posted on the road the day of the event, located approximately across the road from mailbox 220 Bluff Road. If you are planning on attending, we would be pleased if you could RSVP at your convenience at 236-7091.

For those unfamiliar with our work, Coastal Mountains Land Trust is a non-profit land conservation organization that has been working since 1986 to protect land possessing significant ecological, scenic, or public access value throughout the Western Penobscot Bay region. Working on a purely voluntary basis, we provide technical assistance to those private land owners that wish to explore ways to ensure that their property¹s scenic and ecological character is permanently protected. In general, we do this in one of two ways: either by developing a customized conservation easement for privately owned land that serves to protect that property¹s conservation value, or by acquiring full ownership of land which will then be managed as a permanent nature Preserve. The new Mount Percival Preserve is an example of the latter. As a result of our efforts, and with thanks to the support of our members and the community, we have permanently protected more than 4,100 acres of land throughout our service region, which extends from Rockport north through the Belfast Bay watersheds.

As a Preserve, the Mount Percival property will be open to the public for low-impact recreational use, including hunting, although it does not currently have a maintained trail. When we first acquire a property like Mount Percival, one of our first steps is to conduct an ecological inventory of the property¹s natural features, habitats and wildlife. We then use this information to create a management plan for the Preserve that outlines appropriate uses for the property and special management issues that need to be addressed. With regards to Mount Percival, our management plan will determine whether we want to refurbish the old trail to the summit, or if another, new trail might make better use of the natural beauty the Preserve has to offer.

Because Coastal Mountains Land Trust is responsible for maintaining its conservation lands forever, we take stewardship of those lands very seriously. As such, another important purpose of the management planning process is to outline the guidelines of use for the Preserve. Each Preserve carries its own set of regulations to ensure that it will remain natural and beautiful, and will be actively monitored by our staff and volunteer stewards. Additionally, we often rely on the help of neighboring landowners such as yourselves, who alert us to potential problems or violations they may see. If you are at all interested in getting involved as a volunteer steward with the Land Trust, please let us know.

Thank you for your time and interest in this project. I¹ll look forward to meeting you and hope that you will be able to attend on May 11th. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns that you may have. We want this new Preserve to continue to be a special place within your community and will work hard to maintain it as a welcoming place for public enjoyment of nature.

Sincerely,

Judy Berk, Board member and Ian Stewart, Conservation Lands Manager

P.S. Although we have made an attempt to send letters out to immediate neighbors to Mount Percival, please feel free to invite anyone else in the area who you think might be interested in attending this informational event.