The Westport Land Conservation Trust’s primary mission is to preserve the community’s iconic landscapes, with a heightened focus on key conservation, agricultural, and recreational resources. We collaborate with the Town, community and key partners to actively seek out conservation opportunities in both open space and working farms.
At the Halfway Point of 2024
178 acres off Sodom Road
WLCT has secured agreements to purchase 178 acres of undisturbed woods and wetlands off of Sodom Road. WLCT is grateful to be working with Westport families who saw an opportunity to sell to WLCT for strategic conservation. Once conserved, these parcels will be a part of a green corridor of preserved farmland, contiguous forest, core habitat, critical natural landscape, and water resources that stretches from Sodom Road down to the West branch of the Westport River. Preserving the land has a direct impact on water quality in the West branch—these parcels contain more than 1.3 miles of Adamsville Brook tributaries.
An important inspiration for this project was provided by the Town of Westport, when earlier this year, residents at Town Meeting voted to transfer 37 acres to the Westport Conservation Commission with the intention of working with WLCT to expand the trails at Westport Woods.
These parcels represented unused backland that could better serve the public through trails, hunting, and passive recreation. The Town parcels and the Sodom Road project parcels connect to Westport Woods, which will allow visitors to explore 8+ miles of trails over 330 acres from Westport Woods.
When completed, the Sodom Road Conservation Project will represent a $761,500 partnership between landowners, private foundations, individual donors to the Westport Land Conservation Trust, the Town of Westport, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
This project has not yet closed. If you are interested in learning more about the Sodom Road Conservation Project, please contact executive director Ross Moran.
32 Acres of Farmland
In June, MDAR and WLCT completed an Agricultural Preservation Restriction on the 32-acre Mouse Mill Farm. Forever-preserving this family-owned farm at the Head of Westport allows the farm family to consolidate their farm operations and to provide an affordable farm legacy to the next generation of farmers.
In order to complete the $ 1.1 million APR, WLCT partnered with the farmers/landowners, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, and generous WLCT donors.
The Mouse Mill project represents the 10th agricultural project of the Westport Land Conservation Trust in the last 7 years. In addition, WLCT, MDAR, the Town of Westport, and local farmers have preserved over 3,000 acres of farms in Westport.
There’s More to Preserve
Conserving Westport’s unique, coastal landscapes, wetlands and working farmland is a collaborative effort between the Westport Land Conservation Trust, landowners, community members, the Town, and the Commonwealth. WLCT balances the capacity of our staff and volunteers to care for land in perpetuity with the expressed wishes of the community at large. We are honored to preserve one of the last remaining coastal farm communities in the Northeast.