Federal act would protect local water, lands

Sen. Chris Murphy (D) came to Goshen on Monday, June 28, to update Northwest Corner residents about bills he and his colleagues in the Senate and U.S. House have sponsored to reauthorize the Highlands Conservation Act.   The act protects lands in the Highlands region of four East Coast states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut — and originated in New York and New Jersey, which don’t automatically come to minds as places that are super dedicated to open space protection. 

But in fact they are, although their primary motivation isn’t necessarily the preservation of viewsheds and hiking trails and migration patterns for animals. 

It begins with water and flows out from there, according to Tim Abbott, who is  Regional Land Conservation Director for the Housatonic Valley Association.   

State, federal and local oversight

“The original motivation for the Highlands Region in New York and New Jersey was because of the proximity of New York City to Harriman State Park, the Poconos, and other places providing the drinking water for millions of residents in urban centers. Connecticut and Pennsylvania were added in during the debate process,”  Abbott explained. The Highlands region, which was created in 2004, does not extend up to Massachusetts or other northern states. 

The reasons why and how are complex, as is so often the case with both conservation and anything related to the federal government. 

What matters, in the end, is that since 2004 the Highlands Conservation Act has permanently protected more than 11,000 acres in these four states with a combination of federal, state and local funds. The program is administered through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but, Abbott said, the protected lands remain under the protection of the individual state agencies. 

So the 3,646 acres in the 28 northwest Connecticut towns in the state’s Highlands region are protected by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection through either direct ownership or conservation easement.

A key part of climate protection

The Highlands is like a jigsaw puzzle of pieces of protected lands that link together along the East Coast. While there are not the same massive parcels of land that are protected out West, this is still a mighty swath of protected forest, farm and open space.

“The temperate deciduous forests on the East Coast are the most intact of their type globally,” Abbott said. “They are in the best condition and are the least fragmented.”

In part, this is how the four Highland states were chosen. Farther north, in states such as Vermont, Abbott said, you have larger tracts of land that are unbroken by roads and communities, but here, the wildlife are concentrated; and there is more development pressure in the four Highland states. 

“The lands are more compressed. It’s like an ice cream cone,” he explained. The less developed northern states are the top of the cone, the Highland states are the bottom tip.  Animals migrate between these East Coast states, with more ease in the north and less ease in the Highland states. 

It’s the connections that matter

What’s important, Abbott said, is not necessarily the bulk acreage so much as the connections between protected parcels, which allow animals to move safely from region to region. 

“This is the most significant climate corridor east of the Mississippi, running from the Appalachians up to Labrador. It is of continental significance.

“A whole lot of it has been cleared but it is still the lungs of the Northeast, it’s still purifying the water that millions of people drink and it’s still providing habitat resilience for species that are both common and threatened.”

The funding needed to protect these linked lands is its own crazy quilt of bits here and there. The federal government had originally pledged to provide $10 million a year in matching funds. Murphy and his colleagues are presenting a revision of the Highlands Conservation Act that would provide up to $20 million a year. 

States must still give money

It is relatively easier for New York and New Jersey to come up with the matching funds. Abbott said that in New York, for example, the Environmental Protection Fund “routinely has $100 million to $150 million for land protection. 

“In Connecticut that number is closer to $5 to $10 million.”

Abbott is excited about the move to reauthorize the Highlands Conservation Act. As written, it not only would provide more money to states; it also allows states to include more towns. 

In Connecticut, which has 169 municipalities, there are presently 28 towns covered by the act, all of them roughly north of Route 202 as it travels through Litchfield County. Abbott anticipates that the expansion of the Highlands Act would allow the state to include southern towns such as Bethlehem, Woodbury and  Waterbury.  Towns in New York are also likely to be added, perhaps Dover. 

Local parcels protected

But, Abbott stressed, Highlands funds are matching grants and it is essential for states and land trusts and private landowners to work together to protect properties here, as they have done with 15 properties in Connecticut. Included in that list are the Yoakum Preserve, protected recently by the Salisbury Land Trust with the help of a Highlands grant; and three properties preserved last year in Cornwall.  But, again: “This only works if the matching funds are there. It can be private, municipal or state money. It needs to be a priority.”

Sen. Murphy chose Goshen to make his announcement about the effort to reauthorize the Highlands act because there was a recent major land acquisition there, of 627 acres that has been added to the Goshen Wildlife Management Area.

“Monday’s presentation by Sen. Murphy is a celebration of what the act has allowed and what it can do. It’s the kind of protection that’s possible when you have these resources — and that’s not possible when you don’t,” Abbott said. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D)  cosponsors Senator Murphy’s Highlands Reauthorization Bill (S. 753) in the Senate, along with Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.).  In the House of Representatives, New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-18) sponsors the companion legislation (H.R. 2973), cosponsored by Congresswoman Jahana Hayes (D-5) and Congressman John Larson (D-1).