“After raising our kids in Middlebury so they could walk and bike everywhere, we wanted to return to a rural setting with wild neighbors, namely birds and bobcats, coyote and foxes. In 1998 we found a special, undeveloped 60 acres in Weybridge with a mix of fields, woods, copses and wetlands that were visually compelling and offered marvelous habitat and a significant corridor for wildlife. We dreamed of building a house in a corner of the land and conserving the remainder. Luckily, the Middlebury Area Land Trust, with its understanding of the need for stewarding viable wildlife corridors close to town and its focus on local projects, helped us make our dream possible: to conserve most of our property, preserving its ecological and aesthetic integrity forever. Since our acquisition, we have worked with Audubon and a private wildlife biologist-consultant to enhance and protect the diverse habitat our parcel provides for woodland birds such as scarlet tanagers and wood thrush, edge-species birds such as golden-wing warblers and brown thrashers and eastern towhees; open-field birds such as bobolinks and field sparrows as well as many mammals including bobcats, coyotes, fox and deer. Over the course of these 20 years, with advice and careful management, we have seen an increased presence of many of these species. We are thankful for the role MALT played to enable us to achieve our conservation goals and we have found their stewardship check-ins respectful and unobtrusive -- the MALT staff is as thrilled as we are about the renewed life of these acres!”

-Barbara Ganley & Bill Roper