This Centuries-Old Tree Needs You
This Centuries-Old Tree Needs You
WRITTEN BY STEPHANIE MERRILL, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Our Conservation Coordinator, Aiden Pluta, knew it was out there somewhere.
He’d discovered it on his first visit to the property, a couple months earlier, during a baseline survey to determine whether the roughly 20-hectare patch of Appalachian Hardwood Forest—surrounded, as is so much land in Carleton County, by potato fields and farmland—was worthy of permanent protection as a new nature preserve.
His trek that summer day through the lush, deep greenery characteristic of this unique forest type had already revealed promising features—a rare or uncommon lady slipper (pink or showy, it wasn’t flowering), and a stand of mature sugar maple, of a size you don’t often get the chance to see—but any doubt of the ecological value of this land washed away when he saw it: on the eastern-most point of the property, towering far and above all other mature trees and shrubbery, its bark thick and deeply grooved, its canopy casting a wide shadow, its trunk a staggering 130-DBH (diameter at breast height): an ancient Hemlock estimated to be between 300-500 years old.
Conservation Coordinators Ilana Urquhart and Aiden Pluta (and, not shown on the far side, UNB student Madison White) link around the centuries-old hemlock / Photo by Jon Macneill
Right now we're asking for your help to save this tree and ensure generations of New Brunswickers will have the awe-inspiring experience of standing beneath it, like I did one recent autumn day.
It took three of us, arms spanned out, faces pressed to the weathered bark, fingertips barely touching, to encircle the massive tree.
It will take more of us—Nature News readers like you, and so many other Nature Trust supporters—to keep it safe from a saw for as long as it lives.
This hemlock grows on one of the 15+ properties we are currently fundraising to protect as part of our most ambitious acquisition campaign ever, setting the stage for what would be a record-breaking year for conservation at the Nature Trust. With your help, we can add more than 1,400 acres of ecologically vital, irreplaceable habitat to our network.
As an independent land conservation charity, support from New Brunswickers like you is crucial to our success. Private donations are a huge reason why we have been able to nearly double the number of preserves under our care over the last decade, now safeguarding more than 13,000 acres of New Brunswick wilderness.
Can we count on you to help us raise the $200,000 we need to safeguard these new properties?
Your donation of $25, $75 or $150 goes directly toward protecting some of the best remaining wilderness in New Brunswick—climate-resilient Wabanaki/Acadian forests, river valley islands, serene cedar wetlands, and the critically-endangered Appalachian Hardwood Forest.
Nature Trust staff visit Passamaquoddy Bay coastline that would benefit from new extensions to Caughey-Taylor Nature Preserve - additions you can help make happen / Photo by Jon MacNeill
While all important, some particularly notable properties in this campaign include the one supporting the majestic hemlock described and pictured above (not to mention the many 300-500 year-old hemlock also in that stand) on a property we’ve nicknamed ‘The Ancient Hardwoods of Marsh Creek,’ and a 115-hectare expansion to our iconic Caughey-Taylor Nature Preserve outside St. Andrews.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect some of New Brunswick’s most precious spaces, providing sanctuary for rare species and wildlife, resilience for our communities in the face of nature loss and climate change, and endless wonder for children and adults alike.
Please help us make history with this unprecedented conservation achievement—together, we can save these irreplaceable lands forever.