You can now make your gift to the Vermont River Conservancy go twice as far, because an anonymous donor will match all contributions to the VRC 2011 Appeal to help us protect Vermont’s waters and keep them open for public use.

It’s simple:

• If you are a previous donor to VRC, the donor will match dollar-for-dollar any amount above your previous donation. If you double your most recent contribution, the donor will match the entire amount of your contribution!  Contact us to find out your most recent contribution amount.

• If you are a new donor, the donor will match your entire contribution.

This extremely generous offer will make our work on behalf of Vermont rivers and shorelines and your contribution to VRC work harder and go farther than ever.

And it couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene’s devastation, Vermonters, in and out of government, are taking a long look at the state of our rivers. Now is a crucial time to speak up for rivers, river corridors and floodplain policy.

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The Paddlers’ Trail links more than 35 primitive campsites between the Connecticut River’s headwaters in northern New Hampshire south to the Massachusetts border. Since 2009 the VRC has been facilitating a joint effort with more than 20 regional partners to develop and manage the Paddlers’ Trail. For more information about these campsites, or to sign up as a volunteer site steward, go to www.connecticutriverpaddlerstrail.org.

In addition to the VRC, organizations helping to develop these campsites and access points included the Vermont Land Trust, NorthWoods Stewardship Center, TransCanada Hydro Northeast, and Trout Unlimited, with support from the Tillotson Foundation, Vermont Fish and Wildlife, the Plum Creek Foundation, and the Upper Connecticut River Mitigation and Enhancement Fund.

The new sites, from north to south along the river are:

Holbrook Point Campsite, Lemington, VT: On land conserved by the VRC, this beautiful campsite is situated under a canopy of silver maples on the edge of a floodplain forest. It is in a bend in the river, about 1.3 miles south of the Colebrook, NH, bridge, about a day’s paddle from Canaan, Vermont.

Lemington River Access, Lemington, VT: VRC worked with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and area fishing guides to develop a new river access on land owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. A NorthWoods Conservation Corps team worked with interns from Trout Unlimited to build a set of river access stairs, an information kiosk, way-finding signage and a ramp suitable for use by drift boats. Drift boats, popular for fishing the Connecticut, are heavier than canoes and more difficult to launch. The site is just south of the Columbia, NH, covered bridge.

Stevenson Campsite, Monroe, NH: VRC built the site on land opened to the public by the generosity of a farming family on a shady river terrace situated on the New Hampshire side of the river. The site is across from the north end of Stevens Island, 1.5 miles south of the Connecticut’s confluence with the Passumpsic River. It has a picnic table, box privy, register box and way-finding signage to help paddlers locate the site from the river. It was built with a grant from Transcanada Hydro Northeast, operators of power dams on the nearby Moore and Comerford reservoirs.

Scott Devlin Memorial Campsite, Maidstone, VT: Working with the Vermont Land Trust, VRC constructed a site on the farm of Scott and Heather Lefoll. Its development was incorporated into a conservation easement. Seven volunteers built and installed access stairs, a picnic table, a fire ring, way-finding signage, a sign-in register, and a composting privy. It is named in honor of Scott Devlin, a professional pilot and aircraft builder, who loved the outdoors and died at 33 in an air crash.

Dalton Primitive Campsite, Dalton NH: Developed by TransCanada Hydro Northeast, this new paddler campsite is in a secluded bay on the north end of Moore Reservoir. It includes several tent platforms.

Moore Reservoir Tailrace Primitive Campsite, Littleton, NH: Also developed by TransCanada Hydro Northeast, this paddler campsite is situated on river left, just downstream of Moore Reservoir. It includes several tent platforms nestled below a stand of red pines.

Date Change due to Hurricane Irene: Volunteer Sunday, September 18th to help build and install a picnic table, small box privy, register box and access signage at a newly designated campsite in Monroe, New Hampshire.

Volunteer Saturday, September 24th to construct a two-bin mouldering privy at a campsite in Maidstone, Vermont.

Lunch will be provided for both workdays. After the work party, join us paddling to explore these scenic stretches of the river.

For more information and to register, please contact Noah Pollock at noah.pollock (AT) gmail.com or (802) 540-0319.

Thanks to support from the Tillotson Foundation, Davis Foundation, Plum Creek, the Upper Connecticut Mitigation and Enhancement Fund, and individual donors, the VRC has purchased a parcel in Canaan, Vermont. Anglers and paddlers have instead been parking illegally on this privately owned land, causing increased tensions and disputes between recreationists and the landowner. The VRC is now working to developing a plan for municipal site ownership and to completion site improvements.

This spring, VRC is seeking to convey the parcel to the town of Canaan and retain a conservation easement for public access. VRC plans to construct a parking lot for paddlers and snowmobile users, an official boat launch, and a kiosk that contains a map and site etiquette expectations this summer.  We also plan to create a riparian buffer of native species, providing wildlife habitat and protecting water quality.

Consider supporting this project.  Your contributions will be greatly appreciated! All supporters will be acknowledged in the media, online, at a kiosk installed at the access, and in other ways, unless you indicate otherwise.!  Donations are accepted online or by mail.

…..For us members of the Geriatric Society, anticipating a couple of weeks in canoes up on the Arctic coast, it’s a time of e-mails (the current default mode of communication with folks north of 60 degrees) — canoe renters, charter pilots, satellite phone companies — and reflecting how much things have changed since the old days when messages traveled by snowshoe couriers in the winter and canoe brigades in the summer.

If I can talk her into it, Mother and I will take a couple of days in May, between the snow and black fly season (neither of which is for her an attractive feature of northern life) and paddle and camp along a local river: Connecticut, Missisquoi or Winooski. They’re all beautiful rivers; they all have native names; and they have different geological histories.

Whichever one we choose to paddle, we’ll be benefiting from the support and labor of at least a dozen organizations and hundreds of volunteers who monitor, clean and maintain the rivers for recreational users.

The Connecticut now boasts campsites for river travelers all the way from the headwaters to beyond the Massachusetts border; the Missisquoi is part of the already famous Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which stretches from Old Forge, N.Y., to Fort Kent, Maine; and the Winooski falls under the purview of the Friends of the Winooski, which runs an annual six-day trip down that river, featuring history — and natural science-related lectures along the way.

There’s one great organization that has its fingers in, if you will, all three of those pies: the Vermont River Conservancy. Its website shows the number of locations it’s already managed to conserve and protect from development — traditional swimming holes and waterfalls, picturesque gorges, small-craft access points and wild riparian habitats all over the state.

At the moment the conservancy is hoping to save a five-acre parcel of overgrown streamside land on the Kingsbury Branch of the Winooski River in East Montpelier. Rising in a complex of ponds and eskers near Woodbury, the tiny Kingsbury Branch meanders languidly through postglacial sandbanks to a confluence with the main river just below the desired property.

Public access there would open to canoeists and kayakers about 30 miles of paddling on both branches. The conservancy would build a launch site and off-the-road parking for boaters, anglers and snowmobilers. (The Vermont Association of Snow Travelers maintains a snowmobile trail crossing the Kingsbury Branch on the property.)

The Vermont River Conservancy, the Friends of the Winooski and the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers are anything but wealthy organizations. Staffed largely by volunteers, they rely for their funding upon state and federal agencies and private contributions. The budget for this entire project, including an endowment fund to guarantee future protection and maintenance, is quite modest. But the difference between preserving this 1,900-foot strip of stream bank (you can see it on GoogleEarth) and its fate if it’s developed is immense.

A contribution to the fund to save the mouth of the Kingsbury Branch will make you feel a sense of ownership when you visit. More important, it’ll save a part of the state that otherwise might be lost.

If, however, you have no idea where this project is located, and most likely never will paddle there, don’t forget the mighty Connecticut, New England’s longest river. Its expanding string of lovely campsites is in constant need of support. Stop by one (though, like us, you might want to wait until ice-out), spend the night, and send a contribution to the address in the campsite register.

Eighty-eight acres of land along the North Branch of the Winooski River will be protected from development, thanks to a local conservancy group, state money and contributions from 70 local donors.                             

The parcel conserved lies east of Route 12 and straddles the Worcester-Middlesex town line. The land is brushy and lightly wooded with the North Branch winding through it.

The Vermont River Conservancy (VRC) announced this week it purchased 70 acres from longtime owner Anna Whiteside, and bought the conservation easement rights to 18 adjoining acres. Whiteside still owns the 18 acres, but VRC owns the vegetation rights within 50 feet of the river, which will allow it to re-establish a floodplain forest that was cleared decades ago for farming.

The announcement this week is the culmination of a year-long effort by VRC to buy the land, which is the third largest parcel along the North Branch in terms of river frontage, said Mark McEathron, a project manager at VRC.

The protection of the land has a list of benefits, said McEathron.

It will keep the river accessible for recreational use, protect animal habitat, maintain the beauty of the area, and allow “natural river functions” like gradual erosion to continue, which reduces damaging flooding, he said.

“It’s a great thing,” McEathron said of the conservation, “and it’s certainly our hope that we will be able to conserve other important lands along the North Branch as well.”

This recent project is part of VRC’s initiative to protect the North Branch, which begins in the town of Elmore in the boggy highlands and hills along Route 12 north of Montpelier, flowing through Worcester and Middlesex and into the Wrightsville Reservoir and then downstream into the state capital to join the Winooski.

VRC is a Montpelier-based nonprofit founded in the 1990s that works to protect land along Vermont waterways and create public access to waterfalls, gorges, lakeshores and islands.

The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) gave $88,500 to the project, which gave DEC’s River Management Program river corridor conservation easements.

DEC River scientist Gretchen Alexander said the conservation project was a large one from the department’s standpoint.

“It’s a very significant project,” Alexander said. “It’s much larger than other projects we’ve undertaken. It was really a huge opportunity to put that much land under conservation easement at once.”

Giving the river room to evolve naturally over time by preventing develop on the surrounding land will mean a “much healthier river environment,” she said.

The project was also in some ways a departure for VRC, which typically buys smaller parcels to allow access to water. In addition, VRC is going to maintain ownership, something it doesn’t usually do, said McEathron.

The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board contributed $147,000 to the conservation effort, and local donors raised $25,000.

One Worcester resident, selectman Bill Haines, said in a statement he’s “elated” the property will be preserved.

“Having canoed this section of the North Branch I know firsthand what a unique stretch of river the Whiteside property borders,” Haines said.

Fifty-seven of the acres that were purchased are in Worcester and 13 are in Middlesex.

Whiteside received $225,000 in the transaction, and the remainder of the money was used for costs associated with putting the deal together, McEathron said, including legal and closing costs.

By Thatcher Moats, Staff Writer
Times Argus
November 17, 2010