The Northeast Wilderness Trust is the only regional land trust focused exclusively on restoring & protecting wilderness.
Through the seasons and around the Northeast, families of all kinds—some with feathers, some with fins or fur—go about the business of making a living. The Northeast Wilderness Trust is working to make sure these creatures continue to have a place to thrive among the region's human communities.
Click here to learn about our recent conservation success
How and where does the
Northeast Wilderness Trust work?
The Northeast Wilderness Trust works with partners to restore and preserve forever-wild landscapes through conservation easements, land acquisitions, donations and other preservation methods. The Northeast Wilderness Trust bases its land protection priorities on conservation science, wilderness potential, community vision, threat abatement, and opportunity. We work in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Please contact the Northeast Wilderness Trust for more information on land conservation.
For more than a century, the northeastern United States has been regaining wildness. Where land had been cleared, forest has returned. Where wildlife such as moose, bear, beaver--even deer--had been eliminated, these animals have rebounded. While cause for hope, this remarkable recovery is incomplete. Our region's natural heritage--the distinctive plants, animals, and landscapes--are increasingly threatened by increasing population pressures, development, pollution, forest fragmentation, atmospheric and climatic changes, and unstable ownership. We are faced with the challenge of helping Nature continue to heal and flourish for future generations. The need for strategic protection of wild lands and waters has never been greater.
There have been tremendous conservation achievements in the Northeast; however, less than four percent of the region is protected as forever-wild, mostly on public land. Much of the land conserved in the Northeast has been for scenic, recreational, timber, and agricultural purposes. While the protection of multiple-use land is important, the need to complement these lands with the protection of wilderness is critical. The vast majority of land in the Northeast is privately owned; thus, to truly succeed in preserving wilderness areas across the landscape, private solutions are necessary. The Northeast Wilderness Trust was founded on the core belief that wilderness needs to become a bigger part of the conservation landscape so that wild Nature will endure in this corner of America.