About the Sterling Land Trust

The Sterling Land Trust operates within Sterling for the preservation of open space in the town. The Trust was formed in 1998 and in governed by a board of directors, all Sterling residents. Our operations are funded solely by memberships, contributions, gifts, and time of volunteers.

The first Land Trust holding was 11 acres of land off Pratts Junction RD. Gifted to the Trust in 1999 by William and Betsy Spratt, and now known as the Wekepeke Path, there is a marked trail and small bridge over the Wekepeke brook that provide access for hikers and fishermen.

The Land Trust holds a conservation restriction on 15 acres of land off Johnson Rd. The land is owned by the French family who gifted the restriction to the Trust in 1999. Under a Conservation Restriction the land owners retain ownership of the property, but they agree not to develop the land or change it in other negative ways as negotiated on a case by case basis. The Conservation Restriction must be approved by the board of Selectmen and by the Commonwealth. The owners’ real estate tax base is thereby reduced and the land is protected by documents recorded at the county courthouse. The holder of the Restriction inspects the property annually to assure that the terms and conditions are being upheld.

In 2001, The Trust received a very generous gift of 19 acres of forest land, from Charles E. Allen, and includes a small house at 43 Heywood Rd. The land is known as the “Allenwood Parcel” and has a marked trail where views of the Wekepeke reservoir basin can be seen as well as the agricultural lands of Maplebook Farm and Crystal Brook Farm on Tuttle Rd. Mr. Allen also included an endowment to cover the costs of maintaining the property.

In 2003, a Conservation Restriction was granted jointly to the Land Trust and the Sterling Conservation Commission by R. Gary Griffin, Trustee of Fitch Pond Realty Trust I. The restriction covers 30 acres of land abutting both Fitch Pond and another 30 acre parcel at 136 Kendall Hill Rd., also given to the trust by R. Gary Griffin, trustee Fitch Pond Realty Trust I.

How can Sterling Land Trust help you protect your land?

Conservation Quick Facts

1) Landowners may grant an outright donation to the land trust. This makes the land trust the owner of the property and you can deduct the value of the property from your federal income tax as a charitable contribution

2) You may donate your land to the land trust in your will. This will not get you a tax deduction, however.

3) You may donate your property through the use of a Charitable Remainder Trust. Under this method, the donor promises to give title to the property to the land trust upon their death. The donor retains title to the property until that time. The advantage of this technique over a will is that you can take a tax deduction for the donation. It will be less than an outright donation as the IRS deducts the value you receive from owning the property for the rest of your life. This is determined through statistical tables relating to your age and value of your property.

4) You may place a Conservation Easement on your property. Essentially this is a contract with the land trust that specifically limits activities on the land now and into the future. “CR’s” can be tailor-made to the property and wishes of the donor to cover certain activities and certain areas of the land. It generally is carried with the deed to all future owners “forever”. There are two other advantages to conservation easements. First, you can take a deduction from your federal income tax as a charitable contribution for the difference in appraised value before and after the easement is granted.( You will have to pay for these appraisals, and you will want to use an appraiser who understands conservation easements). Secondly, this method reduces the inheritance tax that your heirs will pay upon inheriting the property. Often, inheritance taxes force heirs to sell some or all of the land to pay the inheritance tax. A CR can sizably reduce the value of the property and make it possible for the heirs to maintain ownership of the property.

Reminder: Get professional advice

The Sterling Land Trust is a vehicle by which you can accomplish conservation goals. We can discuss conservation options with you to get you started. You should, however, seek advice from your attorney, estate planner, accountant, or other professional before making any final decisions.

Quote from conservation easement donors Don Ward and Jennifer Eis
Harbor Springs, Michigan

"None of us really owns the land. We can only be the stewards of it. But live its rhythms long enough and the land owns you. It is our privilege to pass on its beauty and strength to those who follow....the two and four legends, and to remove it forever from residential or commercial development. With the decision to enter into a conservation easement, the age-old legacy of stewardship of the land is reaffirmed. It is with deep and heartfelt sense of relief that we can now say, the development stops here."

excerpts from Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver:

With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad...

What we lose in our exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold onto the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us. We succumb so easily to the prevailing human tendency to pave such places over, build subdivisions and then name them ‘The Willows’, or ‘Peregrines Roost’, or ‘Elk Meadows’, after whatever it was that was once there.

Barry Lopez writes that if we hope to succeed in the endeavor of protecting natures other than our own, “ it will require that we re-imagine our lives... It will require of many of us a humanity we’ve not yet mustered, and a grace we were not aware we desired until we had tasted it.” And yet no endeavor could be more crucial at this moment. Protecting the land that once provided us with our genesis may turn out to be the only real story there is for us.

People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to taste the grace and know again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless...to be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about economic status or our running day calendar.

Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.


Please support our endeavor to further land preservation in Sterling with a check made out to the Sterling Land Trust and mailed to Kenneth Williams, Sterling Land Trust Treasurer, 109 Beaman Road, Sterling, 01564.

If you are considering donating property through the Sterling Land Trust, please contact one of the directors.

If you're interested in working with us, contact one of our directors to hear about current needs and opportunities.