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We’re Growing!
We are currently hiring new positions to join our growing team: Development Manager and Conservation & Stewardship Manager.
Our Mission
Hilltown Land Trust conserves and stewards land through strong relationships to ensure clean water, wildlife habitat, climate resilience, recreational opportunities, and healthy farmland for the benefit of all.
Our Vision
The Hilltowns are a place where abundant conserved, well-stewarded, and accessible land supports ecologically, socially, and economically vibrant communities for all people.
Our Values
Community
The benefits of conserving land stretch beyond just our geographic service area. Our HLT community includes partners, donors, visitors, volunteers, and supporters from many places and walks of life. By welcoming and embracing diverse opinions and identities, our Hilltown Land Trust community and the land we care for will have greater impact both within our service area and beyond.
Sustainability
We believe that the health of the land, fauna and flora, air and water, people and communities, require care over the long term. Our mission and actions must be anchored in the truths of the past, the realities of today, and be focused on long range outcomes.
Collaboration
We seek to build lasting partnerships through listening and sustained engagement. We pool our resources with others to advance shared goals. By leveraging our collective strengths and expertise, we will accomplish more than we would on our own.
Accountability
We understand that honesty and transparency are essential to earning the trust of our donors, members, volunteers, partners, and the communities we serve. Additionally, as a land conservation organization, we hold ourselves accountable to telling a more complete history of the land we conserve and steward.
Belonging
All people benefit from the preservation of the natural world and have a right to be heard and included in issues that affect their lives and those of future generations. We seek to reduce historical and present-day barriers to accessing our natural world.
Climate Change
We believe that climate change presents real dangers to our world and action to address it is essential. Conservation and stewardship play a crucial role in mitigating the impacts of climate disruption.
What Does Hilltown Land Trust Do?
Hilltown Land Trust works to conserve ecologically important wildlands, economically and culturally important working lands, and the scenic beauty and rural character of the Hilltowns. Our service area includes 13 rural towns: Ashfield, Chester, Chesterfield, Conway, Cummington, Goshen, Huntington, Middlefield, Plainfield, Westhampton, Williamsburg, Windsor, and Worthington. Since our founding in 1986, we have protected and continue to steward over 5,000 acres of land.
A number of HLT properties offer public access and hiking trails. You can learn more by visiting our Protected Lands page.
Our project committee and Executive Director work with landowners to permanently protect ecologically valuable land in the Hilltowns. If you think you may be interested in working with HLT to protect your property, please contact our Executive Director, Sally Loomis.
To learn more about our work and vision, read our Seven-Year Strategic Plan: 2016-2023.
Visualize the region we serve with Hilltown Land Trust’s service area map.
