THE SYCAMORE Vol. V, Issue 1
Newsletter of
Spring 2004
W I L L I ST OW N C O N S E RV AT I O N T R U ST
Celebrating Twenty-five Years of Conservation and the Remarkable Willistown Community!
A
1979 ~ 2004
The Board of Trustees and staff s I write, a March wind is of the Willistown Conservation sending a late flurry of snow across Trust are pleased to invite you the pond where a small group of to share in celebrating these ringneck ducks have settled on their accomplishments at a number of fun migratory route nor th. In the events we have scheduled throughout meadow beyond, a red fox hunts 2004. We especially hope you will for mice in the long grasses now join us at our Countryside Bash! beginning to turn green with on Sunday, June 13th, a real oldimpending spring. The bogs and fashioned “hoedown” planned wetlands of the Willistown area are to highlight twenty-five years of coming to life with the unfurling of community conservation and to just the skunk cabbage, the song of the plain have a lot of fun (some special spring peeper and the flash of the surprises included)! redwing blackbird in emerging While we are greatly lookcattail swamps along the Ridley, ing forward to this year of Crum and Darby Creeks. celebration, all of us remain Spring is clearly a time to acutely aware of the urgent need to celebrate the diversity and richness continue preserving our remaining of life. As we look back over the past critical lands before it is too late. twenty-five years of conservation With the tremendous support in our area, what better cause for of this remarkable community — celebration than the preservation landowners, land managers, easement of more than 5,000 acres of our donors, investors, conservation buyprecious natural and scenic Future conservationist Georgie Rubin discovers ers, donors, and volunteers alike, we resources, and the remarkable creek critters at our Ashbridge Preserve. are committed to working toward conservation ethic of the community that has made it happen. From the earliest conservation doubling the number of preserved acres in the next few years. It easement donated in the late 1970’s by our dear friend and is because of all of you that we are encouraged to set our goals inspiration, Frances Ellen Paul, to the pending completion this higher, and to go far beyond what any of us had dreamed coming June of the Ashbridge Farm project involving three years possible twenty-five years ago in preserving the richness of this of work and many diverse partners, the benefits of our many special Willistown area for the benefit of present and future successes are far reaching, and affect not only this community generations. but many communities downstream and well beyond the Trust Bonnie Van Alen program area.
President
For the preservation of the natural resources, rural character, and cultural heritage of the Willistown area.