WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Annual Meeting – RESCHEDULED – Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 10AM – Stockbridge Chestnut Preserve
Stockbridge, MA - The Land Trust will hold our annual meeting on Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 10:00 AM. This event is open to members and to the public. The meeting site will be one of the Land Trust’s oldest properties, the Stockbridge Chestnut Preserve on Route 7, south of the town center in Stockbridge, MA. There is ample parking at the site, and light refreshments will be served. Besides very brief business at the meeting, we will hear more about how the Fenn Farm property off of Cherry Hill Road is saved and what its future holds. We will also discuss how the Land Trust partners with landowners, conservation organizations like Laurel Hill Association and Berkshire Natural Resources Council, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to conserve land in Stockbridge.
Note: This event was rescheduled to October 1, 2023.
A return to the past: Monument Mountain set to revert back to Mohican stewardship
“We are trying to reclaim our ways of being which was never based on money. It was the reclamation of our kinship systems, our governance systems, our ceremony and spirituality, our language, our culture, and our food and medicinal systems. Those are all based on our relationships to the land.” Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans [...]
Stockbridge Tribe seeks to recover ancestral homeland at Fenn Farm
STOCKBRIDGE (May 12, 2023) — On a pristine, forested property at the northern tip of Monument Mountain is Fenn Farm — 351 acres of scenic undeveloped land.
The ancestral homelands once belonged to the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. Last fall, it went on the market for $3 million following the death in July of owner Clover Swann, the artist, author and longtime member of the Stockbridge Land Trust.
Last week with the assistance of the Stockbridge Land Trust, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, and the Town of Stockbridge, the tribe submitted a $2.5 million funding application to the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Action Grant program for the purchase and conservation of the property. Grant awards are expected to be announced this summer.
WHO ARE WE?
On a rainy Saturday morning in the summer of 1986, a small group of people met to discuss the preservation of open space in Stockbridge, MA…
Over the past 45+ years, the Land Trust has used a number of methods to carry out its mission of preservation. Its preferred method is the acquisition of a conservation restriction (CR) on privately owned land that has been identified as environmentally significant. The Land Trust informs the owners of this type of property of the tax benefits to be obtained if the owner grants a CR to the Land Trust. The CR limits development of the land and therefore reduces the value of the land. However, the owner is entitled to a federal charitable contribution tax deduction in the amount of the reduction in value brought about by the granting of the CR to the Land Trust, a charitable corporation under federal tax law. In addition, the reduction of the owner’s property value (in granting the CR) reduces the owner’s local, real property tax liability.
Sometimes the Land Trust has identified environmentally significant property where the owner is not interested in granting a CR but wishes to sell the property. In these situations, the Land Trust may ask the owner to convey the property to the Land Trust for less than its full market value. Such a transaction provides the owner with direct compensation (in the amount of the agreed upon purchase price) and also entitles the owner to a charitable contribution federal tax deduction in the amount of the difference between the full market value and the agreed upon purchase price.