WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Annual Meeting – Saturday, October 5, 2024 at 10AM – Chesterwood
Stockbridge, MA - The Land Trust will hold our annual meeting on Saturday, October 5, 2024 at 10:00 AM. This event is open to members and to the public. This year, the meeting site will be at Chesterwood, one of the gems of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There is ample parking at the site, and light refreshments will be served. Besides very brief business at the meeting, we will hear more about the history of Stockbridge as it pertains to the lands between Monument Mountain and West Stockbridge Mountain. This year's speaker is Joshua Hall, Assistant Curator & Genealogist of the Stockbridge Library Museum & Archives.
Annual Meeting – RESCHEDULED – Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 10AM – Stockbridge Chestnut Preserve
Stockbridge, MA - The Land Trust will hold our annual meeting on Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 10:00 AM. This event is open to members and to the public. The meeting site will be one of the Land Trust’s oldest properties, the Stockbridge Chestnut Preserve on Route 7, south of the town center in Stockbridge, MA. There is ample parking at the site, and light refreshments will be served. Besides very brief business at the meeting, we will hear more about how the Fenn Farm property off of Cherry Hill Road is saved and what its future holds. We will also discuss how the Land Trust partners with landowners, conservation organizations like Laurel Hill Association and Berkshire Natural Resources Council, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to conserve land in Stockbridge.
Note: This event was rescheduled to October 1, 2023.
A return to the past: Monument Mountain set to revert back to Mohican stewardship
“We are trying to reclaim our ways of being which was never based on money. It was the reclamation of our kinship systems, our governance systems, our ceremony and spirituality, our language, our culture, and our food and medicinal systems. Those are all based on our relationships to the land.” Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans [...]
WHO ARE WE?
On a rainy Saturday morning in the summer of 1986, a small group of people met to discuss the preservation of open space in Stockbridge, MA…
Over the past 45+ years, the Land Trust has used a number of methods to carry out its mission of preservation. Its preferred method is the acquisition of a conservation restriction (CR) on privately owned land that has been identified as environmentally significant. The Land Trust informs the owners of this type of property of the tax benefits to be obtained if the owner grants a CR to the Land Trust. The CR limits development of the land and therefore reduces the value of the land. However, the owner is entitled to a federal charitable contribution tax deduction in the amount of the reduction in value brought about by the granting of the CR to the Land Trust, a charitable corporation under federal tax law. In addition, the reduction of the owner’s property value (in granting the CR) reduces the owner’s local, real property tax liability.
Sometimes the Land Trust has identified environmentally significant property where the owner is not interested in granting a CR but wishes to sell the property. In these situations, the Land Trust may ask the owner to convey the property to the Land Trust for less than its full market value. Such a transaction provides the owner with direct compensation (in the amount of the agreed upon purchase price) and also entitles the owner to a charitable contribution federal tax deduction in the amount of the difference between the full market value and the agreed upon purchase price.