Two conservation groups recently worked together to create a new 1,800-acre wilderness preserve near the start of Maine’s famed 100-Mile Wilderness.
The new Moxie Pond Wilderness Preserve protects 1,843 acres southeast of Maine‘s Moxie Pond in Somerset County.
Created through a collaboration between the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and Northeast Wilderness Trust (NWT), the new preserve secures a “buffer zone” along five miles of the Appalachian Trail (AT) near the start of the 100-Mile Wilderness.
While long stretches of the AT corridor are owned by the National Park Service, large portions of the surrounding land in New England remain privately held and unprotected. Officials with TPL and NWT said it is these surrounding lands that anchor the AT’s sense of remoteness, provide local access, and enable wildlife movement across the landscape. They said without this buffer zone, the experience and ecology that define the AT are at risk.
Now, the new Moxie Pond Wilderness Preserve precludes development and logging along a five-mile section of the AT, which forms the preserve’s southern border.
Officials said the preserve will be managed as a “wildland” to allow the forest to grow old and the streams to run free—a passive management approach called “rewilding.”
The preserve contains 37 acres of wetlands, three miles of brook trout streams, and a mile of Moxie Pond’s last remaining undeveloped shoreline. Officials said the preserve will also build upon more than 20,000 acres of adjacent conserved land, including the 2,620-acre Moxie Bald Mountain and Bald Mountain Pond and other lands owned by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Land.
The Preserve will also guarantee access to a mile of the Bald Mountain Trail, an important regional snowmobile and ATV route, as well as secure public access for hunters.
To protect and establish Moxie Pond Wilderness Preserve, NWT and TPL secured more than $3.2 million in private support from dozens of foundations and individual donors.
