YORK – New Hampshire state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark and her siblings are working with the York Land Trust in Maine to preserve more than 200 acres of her family’s Rams Head Farm.
Clark’s family has already donated easements on the land and is now looking to sell an untouched, 220-acre forest to the land trust.
Raising the $850,000 assessed value Clark and her siblings seek will be a daunting challenge, but a worthwhile endeavor, York Land Trust officials told The Portsmouth Herald.
The trust has already raised $200,000 and will be asking York voters for $300,000 in May. Clark and her siblings have given the land trust three years to raise the funds.
“It will be a reach, no matter what,” said YLT Executive Director Doreen MacGillis. “With dwindling state and federal funds, it is a serious fundraising challenge. But we can all see a vision for this project. All the children are very excited to be a part of it. And when I talk to people about it, they share our enthusiasm.”
Clark said transferring the Fuller Forest to the York Land Trust would fulfill the final wishes of her mother, Marion Fuller Brown, who died in 2011.
“She loved that property so much,” Clark told the newspaper. “It’s a great tribute to her that we are working to save this land.”
Brown served three terms in the Maine state senate, beginning in 1966. She was a primary sponsor of legislation to ban billboards in Maine, passing a law that remains in effect today. She championed other environmental causes and was a charter member of the Land for Maine’s Future Board and the York Land Trust.
“She loved that property so much. It was terribly important to her,” said Clark. “It’s a great tribute to her that we are working to save this land.”
MacGillis said preserving the forest is important because of its proximity to York Village.
“The uniqueness of this parcel comes from its being so close to the village and neighborhoods,” MacGillis said. “The fact that it’s so accessible, yet with that sense of deep wilderness, is what’s so lovely about it.”
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