Causes: Environment, Land Resources Conservation

Mission: The stowe land trust is dedicated to the conservation of scenic, recreational, and productive farm and forest lands for the benefit of the greater stowe community.

Programs: Summer naturalist2017 brought a successful fifth year for slts summer naturalist program. Our staff worked with nearly 600 people and provided over 100 hours of programming for youth, families, and volunteers. We completed 3 full days of stewardship projects with stowe mountain adventure campers, a natural plant dye program with the new market garden school, and the stowe elementary schools fourth grade field trip to the mill trail as part of their stowe history unit. Dumont meadow ecological restoration slt received a grant from the davis conservation fund for ecological restoration work at dumont meadow in fy16 and fy17 - addressing the non-native bush honeysuckle infestation, restoring the riparian zone, and brush hogging the meadow. The project demonstrates non-chemical invasive plant control methods, engages volunteers, and gets the word out about invasive plants. In may, volunteers planted 550 native trees and shrubs along the river, and an additional 400 invasive bush honeysuckle plants were removed by the end of june. We also installed a trailhead kiosk and informational signs along alexs trail. Funds from the oakland foundation and patagonia were used to cover staff time to complete the work in fy17.Mill trail property improvements bowie and helen duncan donated $10,000 to be used for improvements to the mill trail property and/or cabin. These funds will be spent on projects in fy18.New trail countersslt purchased two new trail counters and associated software to help us to better understand levels and patterns of trail use on our conserved lands. The trail counters were installed near the wiessner and kirchner woods trailheads in the spring. Purchase of the units was made possible by a gift from slt member and volunteer land steward, phil branton. Vail epic promise volunteer work dayapproximately 70 stowe mountain resort employees and family members came together to help out with stewardship projects at cady hill forest in september. This was the first annual company-wide volunteer day in stowe, and we were happy to be the recipient of their volunteer efforts along with the stowe trails partnership and town of stowe. We are looking forward to working with this group again next year. Vail resorts provided funds to slt to cover materials, supplies, and staff time costs associated with the work day. Land protection projects none completed in fy17.Strategic organization projects slt completed a number of strategic projects in 2017 thanks to funding from the land trust alliance (lta) and vermont housing & conservation board (vhcb). With $1,800 remaining 2015 lta excellence funds, slt launched a legacy society to coincide with our 30th anniversary and developed an informational brochure that was mailed to 350 of slts donors. Slt hired nationally recognized fundraising consultant, andy robinson, to lead three fundraising training sessions with board and staff thanks to $2,000 in 2016 lta leadership funds. These training sessions were crucial to bringing slts new fundraising plan to fruition. Vhcb provided a $2,500 technical assistant grant to help cover the costs of quickbooks consulting. This consulting provided training to slts operations manager so that restricted funds could be more efficiently tracked in quickbooks.