Much of the forestland conservation we've done has been made possible by landowners who donate the development rights on their land. What drives landowners to make this generous decision is often as individual as the landowners themselves.
"I don't love this land more than other land," Renée Patnaude says of the 79 acres in Topsham she conserved this past year. "It's just that I have put so much work into it. I have a relationship with it."
When Renée bought her property in 1984 the former pastures were overgrown with saplings and poplars. Seeing herself as an artist and the land as her medium, Renée planted gardens on old log landings, cleared two pastures where she rotates her grazing horses, and built a house and kennels, where she boards dogs.
Renée's desire to conserve her land stems primarily from her concern for wildlife. A frequent hiker on trails she built herself, she regularly sees moose tracks in the mud, bear claw marks in trees, and treetops stripped of bark by porcupines.
