Bozrah ― Avalonia Land Conservancy President Dennis Main stood last week at a marker near the line between Bozrah and Montville, on the conservancy’s recent 160-acre land purchase.

About 30 feet in front of him, rocks created a crossing over Trading Cove Brook, right on the line between the two towns. To the right of the brook, water trickled through crevices in a rock dam, down about five feet and kept flowing.

This new preserve, purchased for $400,000 from the Glemboski and Ous families in early March, breaks down to 55.22 acres in Montville and 105.2 in Bozrah, Main said. Around $300,000 of the cost was covered by a state conservation grant, and the town of Bozrah contributed the other $100,000.

The preserve joins 5,152 acres of preserved land Avalonia already owns that allow residents to freely walk, hike and observe wildlife across Griswold, Groton, Stonington, North Stonington, Norwich, Ledyard and Preston.

“This is our first one in Bozrah and Montville,” Main said.

Referring to a map of the Glemboski-Ous Trails, the current name for the paths that run throughout the property, and an accompanying document titled “Glemboski-Ous Trail Problems,” he pointed to the spot where he was standing, at the edge of the Trading Cove Brook.

“This is another crossing of the same stream,” the document said. “The stream is broad but shallow here with numerous rocks across the stream. Some sort of bridge resting on selected rocks would provide safe crossing.”

Building that bridge is just a portion of the work that Avalonia and its volunteers, “stewards,” who are often neighbors to the preserves who help maintain the land, will do to the site to turn the land from a raw state. Trails already run throughout, but need to be cleared out and better defined. Some of that work will be done by the conservancy’s “stewards,” volunteers, often neighbors to the preserves, who help maintain the land.

Main said Mystic-based landscape architect Kent + Frost is drawing up plans for infrastructure pieces, like that bridge, and a six- to 12-car parking lot and driveway from South Road, right now.

This new preserve is abutted to the south by 340 acres of land that is under conservation by the Nature Conservancy of Connecticut. There are trails running through that land too, Main said.

Together, “it’ll be a good 500-acre infrastructure,” he added.

It will also provide excellent opportunities for birders, Main said, as he pointed out several different bird species as he walked the trails last week.

Main said with the deal for the land in Montville and Bozrah now closed, Avalonia now turns its attention to a nearly 600-acre piece of land, also in Montville, one of at least 12 deals it has “in the pipeline.”

“That’s the next top priority, now that we’ve got this one closed,” he said. “We’ve got other small ones on that we’re working on. That’s our next big one. ”

Aligning with the state’s green plan

Main said Avalonia acquiring the 160 acres in Montville and Bozrah furthers toward meeting a state goal, set in 2016, that said it should have 21 percent, or 673,210 acres of the state’s land conserved as open space by 2023.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection established that goal in it’s 2016 green plan. In order to reach it, the state purchases land itself, while it places conservation easements on other lands purchased by towns, water companies and land conservation organizations, said DEEP Chief of Staff Andrew Hoskins.

Main and Hoskins said they are both still concerned with trying to reach that goal, even though we’re in 2024.

According to the most recent figures from Avalonia, by March 2022, the state had accounted for a little over 513,000 acres of conserved land, leaving 159,000 acres to go before it meets the 2023 goal of 21 percent.

“So even if we acquired another 1,500 acres, that’s 1 percent of that,” Main said.

But Hoskins said more land is likely being conserved than those numbers reflect.

He explained that in order to encourage conservation efforts by other parties, the state provides an Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition (OSWA) program. This program funded $300,000 of Avalonia’s purchase.

“To ensure that this land is preserved as open space forever,” Hoskins said, “When OSWA is used to fund an acquisition, the state gets an easement over the land that ensures that it remains undeveloped, publicly-accessible open space forever, with very limited exceptions.”

But Hoskins said right now DEEP doesn’t have a good way to properly account for all the open space land that is conserved ― namely from towns that have purchased land without help from the grant.

“We need to update the data to ensure that it is properly accounting for all preserved open space across the state,” he said. “And it’s been a couple years since we’ve done that.”

Hoskins said DEEP is working on its next green plan, which will update its goals but also re-survey town-owned lands and help make sure that data captures all of the open space that’s been conserved statewide.

Meanwhile, the federal government since 2021 ― looking to partake in a global conservation initiative ― has been considering legislation that would seek to have 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters preserved by 2030, according to the Connecticut Land Conservation Council that oversees Avalonia and others conservancies in the state.

Main said “without even looking at the 30, we’re still looking at the 21% by 2023, which obviously has passed.”

Editor’s Note: This version corrects figures for the number of acres of land that make up the abutting Nature Conservancy of Connecticut parcel, and number of acres it would take Avalonia to meet 1% of the state goal.

d.drainville@theday.com