Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai.  Movie and Refresments.

Carpenter Carse Library Friday  April 30th 7pm

Vermont filmmakers tell the  inspiring story  of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its unstoppable founder, Wangari Maathai,  the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Taking Root illustrates the development of Maathai’s holistic worldview and model for sustainable development. Maathai discovered the core of her life’s work when she turned her attention to the rural women with whom she had grown up in Kenya’s central highlands. One hundred years of colonialism and neocolonialism had devastated the forests they’d lived with for centuries.

“Why not plant trees?” Maathai thought. Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood, building materials, and produce nutritious fruit. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and began teaching women about the connection between environmental problems and their daily problems.

Hinesburg, VT

Asking Price: $95,000

The Hinesburg Land Trust is seeking a qualified farm buyer to purchase the Bulb Meadow Farm. VLT is partnering with the Hinesburg Land Trust in this project and will hold a conservation easement on the property. The two land trusts are working together to ensure that new farmers have access to this 14.88-acre parcel.

The majority of the land is open hay meadow. Due to the size, soils and location, this property has potential for the establishment of a diversified farming operation. The conservation easement includes the right to build a house up to 1,500 square feet along with agricultural structures.

The Bulb Meadow Farm has a conservation easement held by the Vermont Land Trust. An easement helps landowners and conservation groups voluntarily limit development on productive farmland and forestland, and other natural and community places. Landowners continue to own, manage, and pay taxes on the land and can sell their land; however, the conservation easement permanently remains on the property. The easement on this farm includes a mechanism to assure the farm remains affordable to working farmers in the future.
 

Contact Information Please send your offer, and related materials, to Ann Brush, Hinesburg Land Trust P.O. Box 137 Hinesburg VT 05461. To request additional materials, call Ann at (802) 482- 5656. You may also contact Andrea Morgante at (802) 482-5120, if you have any further questions about the farm and the process.

]]> http://hinesburglandtrust.org/?feed=rss2&p=70 http://hinesburglandtrust.org/?p=67 http://hinesburglandtrust.org/?p=67#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:37:17 +0000 craig http://hinesburglandtrust.org/?p=67 Lots of Hinesburg community members and regional wildlife buffs have been asking about the Indiana Bat, an engandered species found in South Hinesburg. The bat has become quite a friend and symbol of the HinesburgLand Trust’s efforts in conserving open space in our town — and resulted in a large federal grant to assist in completing our work on the Bissonette - LaPlatte Headwaters conservation project.  Here’s some basic information about our friend, the Indiana Bat…

The Indiana Bat is a federally endangered bat species. Indiana bats are long-lived for their size, living an average of 15 years and weighing about the same as 3 pennies with a body about the size of your thumb. During the colder months in Vermont, from November through April, these bats hibernate in caves and mines, called hibernacula. In spring, they migrate from their hibernacula to their summer range, where they are active at night and roost during the day under the exfoliating bark of dead and dying trees or live shagbark hickories.

During the summer months, female Indiana bats form large maternity colonies in maternity roost trees where they congregate to bear and raise their pups from mid-June to early July.

Each reproductive female Indiana bat gives birth to only one pup each year. The pups are born naked, but grow quickly and begin flight at just 3 weeks of age.

Because female Indiana bats exhibit strong fidelity to roost sites, Indiana bats’ maternity roost trees are very important habitat features worth protecting.  In efforts to find maternity roost trees, biologists put radio transmitters on reproductive Indiana bats and track them for the duration of the transmitters’ battery life, about two weeks.

During the summer of 2008, biologists trapped two reproductive Indiana bats on Lewis Creek Road. These bats were then tracked to a large dead elm next to the road. When biologists revisited this tree at dusk and watched the bats leaving their maternity roost, they counted over 300 Indiana bats!  That makes this maternity roost tree the largest Indiana bat maternity colony ever found by bat biologists in Vermont!

FACTS:

• You will never find anIndiana bat in your house!  From spring through fall, they roost exclusively under the exfoliating bark of dead and dying trees or shagbark hickories. 
• Indiana bats are about the size of your thumb, live to be about of 15 years old.
• Each reproductive female Indiana bat gives birth to only one pup each year.
• Bats help control insects, eating over 1,000 mosquitoes, moths, and other nighttime insects per hour!
• The Indiana bat is one of two federally endangered animals found in Vermont.
• Indiana bat populations have become increasingly vulnerable due to White Nose Syndrome, a mysterious syndrome affecting bats in the northeastern U.S.

The Hinesburg Land Trust wishes to thank all townspeople for their support and dedication to the LaPlatte Headwaters Conservation Initiative on Bissonette Farm on behalf of our board members and our partners – the Vermont Land Trust and the Trust for Public Land.

We especially wish to thank those of you who turned out to Town Meeting to voice your support, culminating in the olverwhelming “yea” vote that allows the town to donate $100,000 toward the total $3.65 million project costs.

We are very proud and excited to be part of a community that recognizes the value of intelligent land planning and conservation of natural resources.

For more information about the initiative, click here.