YLT Helps Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Expand to York River Region

We couldn’t be more thrilled to announce a new property we helped preserve recently near our Highland Farm Preserve. In partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW), York Land Trust facilitated a deal with the family of the late Mary McIntire Davis to protect a 90-acre forested parcel on Kingsbury Lane that will now become part of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge.

An 8th generation York resident and avid conservationist, McIntire Davis received the Maine Critical Areas Award in 1988 for fighting against development of this very property that had been in her family for hundreds of years.

Permanently protecting the property would have been exactly what Mary McIntire Davis would have wanted, says Mal Davis, one of her three sons. “She’d be absolutely ecstatic about this,” says Davis. “We try to carry on in her memory.”

YLT worked with the Davis family to acquire the rights to purchase this land, and helped USFW raise the $880,000 to complete the deal. Sources of funding included a grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and contributions from Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Kennebunk Savings Bank, USFW, and private individuals. USFW now owns and will oversee management of the land, which falls within the York River watershed.

Wetlands on the property drain into the York River estuary, one of the least disturbed marsh ecosystems within the Gulf of Maine, according to the Maine Natural Areas Program. Rare plants and animals, including the Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow, find their home in this region.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has an outstanding history of managing land for the benefit of wildlife,” says YLT’s executive director Doreen MacGillis. “Because of the sensitive habitats within this area, they will be the ideal owners of the property.”

The new acquisition is the first within the York River Division of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, a division established in 2007 by USFW to protect the unusually rich habitat and biodiversity along the York River. The new addition also builds on the mission of the Mt. Agamenticus to the Sea Conservation Initiative (MtA2C), an effort York Land Trust is working toward with nine other partner organizations to create a corridor of unfragmented land from the top of Mt. Agamenticus to the coast of Kittery.

Ward Feurt, manager of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and MtA2C partner is excited to see the refuge expand in this important way, and to be working so closely with YLT.

“York Land Trust has been a wonderful partner for years and years,” says Feurt. “We are happy to have them as a close neighbor now.”

This article appeared in YLT’s Spring 2017 Landmarks Newsletter.