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Greenprint for Litchfield Hills (CT)

Photo by: Jerry & Marcy Monkman

Some of New England's most spectacular vistas and landscapes are found in Connecticut's Litchfield Hills. Rolling meadows, forested hillsides, and working farmland surround and define our communities. Our streams and rivers have some of the country's finest trout fishing. Home to tiny migratory songbirds, bear, and bobcat, this region also hosts the longest stretch of riverside Appalachian Trail on the eastern seaboard. It is a special place. And it is rapidly disappearing.

Photo: Jerry & Marcy Monkman

Residents and visitors often think of the Litchfield Hills as an oasis from poorly-planned development and congested highways. The truth is that development is occurring at twice the rate of the region's population growth. Counties to the south and west are seeing 5,000 acres acres each year shift from rural to suburban and commercial land uses. We have a small window of opportunity to protect the very landscapes that define our sense of place here in the Litchfield Hills-maybe twenty years at best.

Litchfield Greenprint Interactive Map

The Litchfield Hills Greenprint, a partnership of the Trust for Public Land and the Housatonic Valley Association, promotes coordinated, long-term and locally driven conservation to ensure that the ecological qualities of this landscape and the character of its communities endure for generations to come. Together with local and regional partners, we share a conservation vision that prioritizes our most significant and vulnerable open space resources for protection and will increase the pace and the quality of conservation activity across the Litchfield Hills.

So what can be done? How can local citizens and the many local, regional, and national conservation organizations that care about the future of the Litchfield Hills work together to leverage talent, energy, and funding?

Photo by:  Jerry & Marcy Monkman

To be successful the community needs a plan, a strategy that identifies the most vulnerable open space and creates new opportunities for partnership. The Litchfield Hills Greenprint is an initiative sponsored by the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), the Trust for Public Land (TPL), and area land trusts that addresses these needs and will protect the character of the Litchfield Hills for generations to come.

A greenprint is a land use plan created by community leaders and residents that identifies and prioritizes important lands and can be used to leverage significant new funding and land use tools for conservation. Greenprints engage conservation professionals, municipal leaders, and members of the public in mapping, strategic partnerships, and on-the-ground land conservation.

Litchfield Hills Greenprint Goals

1. Establish a conservation vision. Conservation leaders are using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify important natural landscapes, land use patterns, already conserved lands, and the land protection priorities of the Litchfield Hills. Called the Living Map Project, this new mapping resource is hosted by HVA and TPL and is available to local partners for all their mapping and conservation planning needs. It is "living" because it is continuously being updated with new and emerging information, using state-of-the-art analysis to identify our most treasured and vulnerable landscapes.

2. Create new opportunities to protect land in the development process. Communities and developers can work together to implement strategies that protect important landscapes. The greenprint process will cultivate new ideas and partnerships to better integrate conservation and development activities.

3. Create new sources of funding for land protection in the Litchfield Hills. By tapping all levels of the public and private sector, we are working to create new funding sources, targeting federal dollars as well as increased state support and local bond measures. At the same time, we are working to establish the Litchfield Hills Land Protection Fund, a capital revolving fund for conserving our most extraordinary and vulnerable farms, waterfront properties, and forestlands.

4. Increase the acreage of protected land in the Litchfield Hills. With state-of-the-art mapping, new land use tools, and more funding, we can protect more acreage through land purchases, conservation easements, and donations.

For more information, contact Lisa Bassani.

Updated 8/2006