Cape Elizabeth Land Trust serves critical role in community

Brett Gamache painting for Paint for Preservation. Bob Harrison

The Cape Elizabeth Land Trust (CELT) works to conserve and maintain land in the town as well as educate people on conservation and the importance of natural resources. The land trust currently has about 865 acres conserved across 35 properties. The properties are a combination of land CELT owns as well as properties with conservation easements.

“The Cape Elizabeth Land Trust was started in 1985 by an intrepid group of small individuals committed to conserving important lands in Cape Elizabeth,” said David Briman, interim executive director of the land trust. “Fast forward to where we are now, 2023, we’re a nationally accredited land trust. We’ll be seeking renewal of that accreditation prior to 2025. That’s with the Land Trust Alliance, which is the national body that provides guidance and best practices for all land trusts. It’s not obligatory, but we think it’s a worthwhile investment on our end and I think it shows how committed we are to doing things the right way.”

Cape Elizabeth Land Trust has three major pillars, said Briman: conservation, stewardship, and education. The land trust intends to be part of 30×30, the worldwide initiative to conserve 30 percent of Earth’s land and water by 2030. The trust focuses on conserving not every bit of land, but the most important parts.

“Equally important are the incredible efforts made by our stewardship volunteers to maintain trails, build trails, repair bridges, build bridges, constantly pull invasive plants which are spreading at an incredible rate and certainly threaten our native ecosystem, our native habitat,” said Briman. “So I’m really proud of all the stewardship work that gets done.”

The land trust also works with Cape Elizabeth schools to help educate on conservation and the importance of natural resources.

“We really feel like we rest on land conservation, on stewardship, and certainly on education,” Briman said. “We are incredibly proud of some place-based education programming partnered with the school system for our seventh and eighth graders at our Turkey Hill Farm property, which is off Old Ocean House Road.

“I think it’s worth saying that these were not simply a field trip: these are a day, two days a week, where they went out to Turkey Hill Farm and in the farm they did a tree study, a tree unit, and in spring they did a bird unit, and it was their classroom. It was out there. Each of those programs culminated in a really well attended, well received, student presentation on a subject they had studied during that semester, so super cool.”

Cape Elizabeth Land Trust holds one major fundraiser a year: Paint for Preservation.

A volunteer team prepares this event over ten to eleven months of planning. The event features 31 juried artists setting up easels across the town to paint various local landscapes. The event is publicized so people can come and watch the painters at work, before the art is auctioned off the following weekend to benefit CELT.

Artists also contribute mystery boxes, a nice box in a bow containing a small piece done by one of the artists. These are are also sold as part of the fundraiser.

Cape Elizabeth Land Trust recently held its 16^th annual Paint for Preservation. The event was popular, Briman said, with about 440 people in attendance and did well in raising funds.

“This is amazing,” said Briman. “We don’t do this without the volunteers. The reality is, land trusts by and large don’t do this without volunteers. So there should never be a time when I’m not thanking all the volunteers, specifically the Paint for Preservation committee who pulls this off, our sponsors who are incredible, the people who buy the tickets, the people who decide to join our host committee, we rely on it.

“This is critical to allowing us to do the work that we do. And otherwise we are member-supported, and we need members—I mean we have a great body of members—but we are always looking for more.”

Paint for Preservation attracts artists and guests from all over New England and has been imitated in some places.

“It’s not just a one afternoon event,” Briman said. “It’s a weekend. These are artists who specialize in plain air painting. They’re outside. They’re painting what they see. They’re painting landscapes, and they do it starting on the Friday of whatever weekend we choose and continuing on Saturday and the auction is held on Sunday. We publicize where they are so people can interact with the artists and see what’s being worked on in advance of the auction.

“I just love the intersection between what we’re trying to do and the way these artists capture it. It’s really the intersection of, I see it, of art and nature. I mean, we’re looking to protect the natural world and inform people of the natural world and get people out and active in the natural world as much as we can, and these artists are putting it on canvas … It’s powerful and it’s calming. I mean, in the sort of seemingly chaotic, hectic world we go in, it’s really nice to be a part of this community.”

For more information about Cape Elizabeth Land Trust, visit www.capelandtrust.org/.