Our Impact
3,000 acres preserved through donations and land acquisitions, in conservation forever
“Conservation is humanity caring for the future”
Nancy Newhall
Committed To Conservation
From meandering rivers and marshes to forests and fields, the Trust aims to protect these resources and create resilient landscapes in our changing climate.
Committed to Community
Conservation should be ecosystem based, and that is an ecosystem we exist within. Through our town partnerships, we aim to protect the history and livelihood of our community.
Learning the History…
Each of our programs works to connect individuals to the story of the land they walk upon, and understand that we are not the first people to enjoy these landscapes.
… To understand the future
With that in mind, we hope to foster a stewardship of the land, to leave it better than we found it for future generations to enjoy and look back upon the history we create today.
How we work
We are a non-profit.
The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust is a registered 501(c)3 organization. What does that mean?
It means that we operate on the generosity of our community donors and membership, and everything given to the Trust goes back into the Trust’s work for you. The properties we protect, we protect for the public, whether that’s for recreation or long term conservation.
Protect and Conserve
With the help of our members, the Trust has acquired a variety of special holdings in Kennebunkport. We are forever protecting and caring for our properties with the intention of bringing each to its highest potential. This includes ensuring the health of critical habitat and natural areas, preserving spectacular scenic vistas, maintaining public recreational areas, providing access to harbor islands, and restoring our historic properties to their most important period in history.
You are encouraged to explore with us....take a hike, go for a paddle, camp, picnic, swim or comb the beach. With over 3,00 acres, 30 miles of trails, a dozen islands, 7 beachfront lots, a lighthouse, an historic boat house, and a headquarters full of activity, there is truly something for everyone!
Educate
“Trust in Our Children” is a collaboration between the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, and dedicated teachers, parents and volunteers in the Kennebunks, created to introduce students to the beauty, history and ecology which surrounds us. As part of the program, students visit various Trust properties, on which they participate in a variety of learning experiences and programs, each of which is tied to the Maine Learning Standards. These programs are designed to be not only educational, but fun. Through them, our children gain a greater understanding of the landscape and, as a result, a greater willingness to enjoy and increase their outdoor activities. We want them to realize that learning is not limited to a time or a classroom, but is lifelong and all around them. We want them, by the end of the process, to have developed a stronger “sense of place”, using the knowledge gained through our field trips to better appreciate their own home town. We want them to develop an eye for seeing the little things that allow us to trace back to our past or witness the workings of nature. We want them to more fully understand the connections, between the environment and man, and between the past and present. And, we want this all to be enjoyable, something they will look forward to.
Each of the Trust holdings has its own story to tell. Through “Trust in our Children” we try to show that the traces to our past are all around us. Like clues to a puzzle, they are hidden in the landscape, waiting for us to explore and understand them. Some are small, like a simple piece of barbed wire lodged in the bark of a roadside tree. Others speak more strongly of those who lived on this land before us, like a stone wall in the midst of the forest, lor solitary gravestones, left to remind us of those others who once worked, played on and loved this special place.
Nature too has its special story to tell on KCT properties. We see boulders left by a retreating glacier, seashells buried deep in the earth, or a meadow formed by a long abandoned beaver dam. A scarred tree talks if a devastating fire, a colorful flower of nutrients in the soil, a bird in flight of amazing migrations, and the tracks by the waterhole of the wildlife that also call this place home.
We find that the world of man and wonders of nature are not isolated. Much like a scene woven into a beautiful tapestry, all our lives are interconnected and interdependent. And just as pulling a thread from the tapestry destroys its perfect harmony, so too does ignoring our ties to the environment of which we are a part.
Neither are we disconnected from our past. The stories of those who came before us are a part of our story, for their lives and actions have brought us to where we are. So too will things we do affect those who will follow. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, the ripple of our actions will touch people and places in ways we could never imagine as they spread in the ever expanding circle of time.
We hope that the discoveries made on Trust properties will open the eyes of students to things most often taken for granted. We hope the program will make them think, and wonder and ask questions. We hope they will use their imaginations, be amazed by what has been and inspired as to what could be. We hope that this program will help them to carry a joy and love of learning with them for the rest of their lives ; our gift them, and their success a gift to us.