spectr17
12-15-2002, 09:02 PM
The Un-greening of Nancy Bell
Over her two decades on the New England conservation scene, she's morphed from staunch tree-hugger into an eco-pragmatist willing to negotiate - up to a point - with her worst environmental demons.
By Yvonne Daley, Boston Globe Magazine
12/15/2002
Nancy Bell, the New England director of The Conservation Fund, is leading us on a forced march, actually a forced drive, through some of northern New England's most isolated areas. At the same time, operating her four-wheel-drive vehicle like a mobile office, she arranges property transactions with colleagues in Washington, D.C., gives advice to a sick friend, and makes good on her promise of real croissants in the hardscrabble town of Colebrook, New Hampshire, all the while pointing out valuable natural resources up for grabs.
Driving through Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, named for the residents' independence and the region's remoteness, we visit farm after farm where the land unfurls gently toward the serpentine Connecticut River, creating a sense of sustainability. "Don't trust that feeling," Bell says. "There's a way of life at stake up here."
"Make no mistake about it," she adds later. "We're losing the industries that sustain village life - timber harvesting and dairy farming. I don't think I can stop these changes, but I might be able to save a bit of it. At least, that's what keeps me working," says Bell, 55, a handsome woman with long, coarse hair, a fierce honesty, and a body honed and tanned from hiking, mountain climbing, deer hunting, and wielding a chain saw.
Chain-saw wielding? Deer hunting? Timber harvesting? No, Bell is not the inflexible idealist she admits she was in her early years. Indeed, she has turned into one of the most effective conservationists in the region by becoming a skillful, pragmatic negotiator, willing to see the point of view of loggers and snowmobilers and hunters and even developers.
Heading north and east, we crisscross the Connecticut River, the border between Vermont and New Hampshire, visiting farms on both sides, with their weathered buildings and riverfronts teeming with birds and wildlife. Then we drive across the tip of the Granite State into Maine.
Along the route, Bell stops to check on some of the dozens of projects she's involved in for The Conservation Fund, a wide-ranging environmental organization whose national office is in Arlington, Virginia. We visit a landowner in northeastern New Hampshire who plans to donate her property to the fund to save it from the honky-tonk development spawning around the lake she has lived next to for 70 years. And we stop to see a cabin deep in Maine woods that will be removed to restore to wilderness an area recently purchased by the fund.
Our drive might be an idyllic outing, but there's nothing like a fervid lover of nature to notice a fresh gash where timber has been clear-cut on a distant hillside or spot some other flaw in the scenery. As we drive and stop to talk to farmers, environmentalists, loggers, and town officials, Bell rails at the epidemic of for-sale signs on farm after farm, the closed lumber mills in Berlin, New Hampshire, the developments springing up on what has been wilderness for most of the past two centuries.
Bell pulls her car into Roger and Susan Irwin's barnyard in Maidstone, Vermont, a town of 105 residents located deep in the Kingdom. The Irwins spill out of their neat farmhouse - mother and father and son with dog - and then welcome us into a front room whose floor is covered with a dozen sets of moose antlers and whose walls are lined with stunning photographs of wildlife living on or near the Irwins' land.
"See this rack here," Roger Irwin says, hoisting giant antlers and pointing to one of his photographs. "Here's the moose it came from." He explains that the racks were found after the moose had shed them; the only shooting he does is with his camera.
There are no cows on the Irwins' farm, for two decades one of the most productive dairy operations in the region. They sold their prized Jerseys a year ago, because they couldn't take the financial drain and the endless work routine. For several years before making the decision to sell, they struggled on next to nothing until Roger Irwin noted he made more money from his wildlife photography than from farming. In recent years, as federal dairy supports have dwindled and costs have increased, Irwin figures he made only a few bucks an hour for his labor.
Since giving up the cows, he has expanded his hobby into a business. But he worried about the land. The last thing the Irwins wanted was to see it parceled out for housing lots or turned into a retirement village. Then, last year, Bell showed up with her plan for saving prime agricultural, timber, and riparian land; she offered them participation in the Conservation Fund's Northern Connecticut River Conservation Initiative. Under the program, farmers and other landowners agree to place restrictions on their property, banning development forever, in return for a payment from the fund based on the lowered property value. Residents retain ownership of the land and can require conditions of their own - for example, allowing their children to build on the land. Each deal is uniquely designed to meet the needs of the property owner and the special features of the parcel.
Phase one of the project, funded in part by a $914,000 North America Wetlands Conservation Act grant, targets threatened wetlands and valuable habitats within the northern Connecticut River watershed, which includes most of Coos County in New Hampshire and Essex County in Vermont. The first nine farms invited into the program total 2,729 acres.
This is one of roughly two dozen environmental projects Bell is involved with. As she meets with farmers, loggers, town officials, and members of other environmental groups, Bell is also keeping tabs on the final details of the Champion International timberlands purchase, the largest multistate conservation partnership between public and private groups in US history, which she helped negotiate in 1998. It resulted in the conservation of 300,000 acres of timberland in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The agreement was controversial, because it allowed some traditional uses, like hunting and logging, to continue on selected parcels.
Meanwhile, she's continuing her effort to expand a wildlife corridor for black bears along Vermont's central spine; she's working on a host of small projects in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; and she's supporting conservation efforts as far away as Russia and Costa Rica.
"But," says Bell, "it often seems not enough. Time's running out for too many species and too many environments. There's an awful lot of work to be done." This is especially true, she says, in a post-9/11 world where "the land is one of our most essential places of solace. We need it now more than ever."
But today, there's less money for conservation from private sources and, she says, a general anticonservation atmosphere in Washington. Developers have bought millions of acres of northern timberland and farmland as investments in one of the few commodities that rarely decline in value. Thus Bell has come to see that to save the land she loves, she must work to maintain the industries that support it: sustainable timber harvesting and farming.
It's not a position she came to overnight. When Bell blazed onto Vermont's environmental scene in 1981, she "knew squat-diddly" about environmental issues and had a Pollyannaish attitude about saving every tree and every bit of undeveloped land. Negotiation was anathema, "conciliation" a dirty word. At public hearings and state-level meetings, wearing a granny dress and long braids, she represented the most idealistic segment of the environmental movement. "I was definitely a crunchy granola," she recalls.
These days, she's comfortable changing out of work boots and jeans to don a handsome suit and dress shoes before meeting the governor or wealthy donors or to attend a public meeting. And she's also learned that a little practical attention to the needs of the community is more apt to gain support for a conservation project than rabid idealism.
Her evolution from extremist slaving away at small, piecemeal projects to sophisticated negotiator with state and federal officials, private citizens, and often a smorgasbord of special-interest groups over the future of whole ecosystems parallels the natural adaptation that has occurred within the environmental movement. Like Bell, conservationism matured in the 1980s and 1990s. Economic realities and experience taught many conservationists that rather than being at costly loggerheads - both financially and emotionally - with a developer for a decade, it was better to build consensus on the future of a contested property than lose the battle outright.
"The attitude when I graduated from law school in 1975 was that business was the enemy," says Ed McMahon, vice president at The Conservation Fund. "The tactics were confront and sue. Now, we put collaboration ahead of confrontation. We've accepted that business has to be on board, not overboard."
Negotiating with business developers - and, in Bell's case, loggers, hunters, and others viewed as the enemy by environmental purists - has brought the ire of those she most admires, such as Jim Northup, president of the Vermont chapter of Forest Watch. But as she's tackled some of New England's thorniest environmental battles - including expansion at Vermont's Killington, the ski giant of the East, and the recent Champion deal - Bell's success has been undeniable; her work has led to the conservation of more than 400,000 acres. But 18-hour workdays and anger from those she once considered friends have taken their toll.
Exhausted and overwhelmed, she tried to quit her job with The Conservation Fund twice in the past year and a half. And twice, Patrick Noonan, the fund's chairman, has found a way to keep her on board. "Nancy personifies the innovation and leadership that we need in conservation today," Noonan says.
The praise has not been universal.
Vermont environmentalist Northup used to work for the US Forest Service. He quit in 1994 in opposition to federal approval of logging on National Forest land. Now with Forest Watch, Northup has become a champion of preserving as much wilderness as possible. When he learned that Bell and other environmentalists had agreed in negotiations to allow logging to continue on a small section of the Champion land in the Northeast Kingdom, he felt that an opportunity to create a big block of old-growth forest in Vermont had been lost forever. Beyond that, he says the trend toward negotiation and compromise between environmentalists and developers has jeopardized the environmental movement's ability to lobby for wilderness. He also thinks too much discussion and deal making gets done behind closed doors, where the general public and more resolute groups like his often don't have a voice.
Shortchanged in the process, says Northup, are "those without a seat at the deal makers' table - future generations and wildlife species dependent on large blocks of wild, unlogged, unroaded forests for their survival."
Born in New York City, Bell has lived most of her life in Vermont. She attended the University of Vermont but left without a degree. Her rented 100-year-old hillside cabin in Shrewsbury sits on a high plateau where spring comes a few weeks later than in the valley below. Winter comes early also. The squat house is equipped with electricity, telephone, and computer, but no television and few of the other amenities of contemporary life.
Even during the most dramatic winter storm, her place is warm, however, thanks to two wood-burning stoves. A bearskin covers a wall, the dark fur glistening. Although Bell sometimes hunts for her own food, she did not shoot this bear. Someone gave her the skin years ago. "I've eaten bear meat," she says. "It's delicious, but I wouldn't shoot a bear now." The bear has become one of her personal totems, a creature that she believes keeps her grounded and in touch with the natural world. One of her first environmental endeavors as director of the Shrewsbury Land Trust, which she founded in 1981, occurred when a quarry operator cut trees in a deer yard, a forest clearing where the animals take shelter in winter. In Vermont, deer yards are practically sacred, protected under state law. Bell successfully argued to the local environmental commission that the quarry owner had destroyed the deer yard intentionally to circumvent Vermont law - no deer yard, no cause for the state to oppose his quarry operation.
The commission agreed, fining the quarry owner and ordering him to finance conservation on land of equal environmental value and place it in perpetual protection for wildlife habitat. The order set a state precedent and established Bell as a formidable adversary.
But it was during the 13 years that Bell battled Killington Ski Area's expansion plans that she grew from naive purist to successful negotiator. It began in 1983 when Killington filed a permit to cut beech trees and create a snow-making pond on land the ski area owned in the wild and uninhabited area in Mendon, Vermont, known as Parker's Gore. Geographically, Parker's Gore is Shrewsbury's backyard. Eventually, Killington also sought state permission to dramatically expand its trail system so it could merge with the nearby Pico Ski Area.
Bell had hiked into Parker's Gore and found beech trees that were scarred with old and recent claw marks, an indication that bears had long used the area for critical fall feeding. Beyond protecting Shrewsbury's unmolested view, Bell was also committed to protecting what she considered prime bear habitat.
It took more than a decade before the deal was done. During the process, Bell developed a compromise plan that would allow Killington some of what it wanted while also protecting Parker's Gore and a wider expanse of bear habitat. It was, she says, a matter of listening to what Killington needed while refusing to sacrifice the bear's territory. In return for permission to merge with Pico and expand its network of trails in already developed areas, Killington gave the state of Vermont the 3,000-acre Parker's Gore. The ski area also gave the state $375,000 to purchase additional land to connect two sections of the Green Mountain National Forest that were frequented by black bears.
With the Killington money and additional state and federal funding, Bell was able to negotiate conservation easements with private landowners and communities whose property was routinely traversed by bears. She also purchased parcels of land outright to add to the Calvin Coolidge State Forest, a 16,000-acre tract near the community of Plymouth, Coolidge's birthplace. Today, the protected bear habitat totals 20,000 acres.
"My big ego booster," says Bell, "is to stand at the top of Okemo State Forest and look north and south along the spine of the Green Mountains and see that the habitat that Vermont's black bear needs to travel, feed, and breed safely in has been protected forever.
"That never would have happened under the old way of fighting development. By listening to what Killington needed and being more selective about what we wanted out of the deal, we both got more than we wanted," says Bell. "It's a lesson I've never forgotten."
If negotiating with Killington was tough, working on the Champion negotiations was tantamount "to finding consensus at a mud-slingers' convention," Bell says. "We had wilderness advocates who wanted little recreation and snowmobilers who wanted to quadruple their 150 miles of trails. It was nuts."
Nevertheless, by the fall of 1998, Bell had created what may be the most diverse group of collaborators in environmental history - birdwatchers and mountain bikers, snowmobilers, hikers, biologists, hunters, and local and state officials. Backed with $76 million that Bell and others with The Conservation Fund had raised, the group won the bid to purchase 300,000 acres of Champion land in three states - 19,000 acres in New Hampshire, 133,000 in Vermont, and the rest in New York.
Just as she had learned during the Killington negotiations that she could win support for bear habitat by compromising on ski expansion, Bell came to appreciate during the Champion negotiations that forestry and agriculture were the mainstays of both the economy and the ethic of the region, but that both needed help. Bell viewed the situation as a challenge and an opportunity.
The Northern Connecticut River Conservation Initiative is her way of helping to sustain the industries that will preserve the rural environment. For people like the Irwins, the agreement means a small influx of money when they sorely need it - the roof of the Irwins' 200-year-old farmhouse just needed replacing. More important than financial compensation, says Roger Irwin, is the knowledge that they are conserving "not just the land but perhaps a way of life."
"We've seen the growth of new homes up and down the river, many of them vacation homes for people who spend most of their time elsewhere," he says. "Even if none of my children decides to live on the farm, even if we end up selling it some day, this agreement with The Conservation Fund means the land stays as it is forever. There's a lot of comfort in that."
Yvonne Daley is a freelance writer. She lives in Rutland, Vermont.
Over her two decades on the New England conservation scene, she's morphed from staunch tree-hugger into an eco-pragmatist willing to negotiate - up to a point - with her worst environmental demons.
By Yvonne Daley, Boston Globe Magazine
12/15/2002
Nancy Bell, the New England director of The Conservation Fund, is leading us on a forced march, actually a forced drive, through some of northern New England's most isolated areas. At the same time, operating her four-wheel-drive vehicle like a mobile office, she arranges property transactions with colleagues in Washington, D.C., gives advice to a sick friend, and makes good on her promise of real croissants in the hardscrabble town of Colebrook, New Hampshire, all the while pointing out valuable natural resources up for grabs.
Driving through Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, named for the residents' independence and the region's remoteness, we visit farm after farm where the land unfurls gently toward the serpentine Connecticut River, creating a sense of sustainability. "Don't trust that feeling," Bell says. "There's a way of life at stake up here."
"Make no mistake about it," she adds later. "We're losing the industries that sustain village life - timber harvesting and dairy farming. I don't think I can stop these changes, but I might be able to save a bit of it. At least, that's what keeps me working," says Bell, 55, a handsome woman with long, coarse hair, a fierce honesty, and a body honed and tanned from hiking, mountain climbing, deer hunting, and wielding a chain saw.
Chain-saw wielding? Deer hunting? Timber harvesting? No, Bell is not the inflexible idealist she admits she was in her early years. Indeed, she has turned into one of the most effective conservationists in the region by becoming a skillful, pragmatic negotiator, willing to see the point of view of loggers and snowmobilers and hunters and even developers.
Heading north and east, we crisscross the Connecticut River, the border between Vermont and New Hampshire, visiting farms on both sides, with their weathered buildings and riverfronts teeming with birds and wildlife. Then we drive across the tip of the Granite State into Maine.
Along the route, Bell stops to check on some of the dozens of projects she's involved in for The Conservation Fund, a wide-ranging environmental organization whose national office is in Arlington, Virginia. We visit a landowner in northeastern New Hampshire who plans to donate her property to the fund to save it from the honky-tonk development spawning around the lake she has lived next to for 70 years. And we stop to see a cabin deep in Maine woods that will be removed to restore to wilderness an area recently purchased by the fund.
Our drive might be an idyllic outing, but there's nothing like a fervid lover of nature to notice a fresh gash where timber has been clear-cut on a distant hillside or spot some other flaw in the scenery. As we drive and stop to talk to farmers, environmentalists, loggers, and town officials, Bell rails at the epidemic of for-sale signs on farm after farm, the closed lumber mills in Berlin, New Hampshire, the developments springing up on what has been wilderness for most of the past two centuries.
Bell pulls her car into Roger and Susan Irwin's barnyard in Maidstone, Vermont, a town of 105 residents located deep in the Kingdom. The Irwins spill out of their neat farmhouse - mother and father and son with dog - and then welcome us into a front room whose floor is covered with a dozen sets of moose antlers and whose walls are lined with stunning photographs of wildlife living on or near the Irwins' land.
"See this rack here," Roger Irwin says, hoisting giant antlers and pointing to one of his photographs. "Here's the moose it came from." He explains that the racks were found after the moose had shed them; the only shooting he does is with his camera.
There are no cows on the Irwins' farm, for two decades one of the most productive dairy operations in the region. They sold their prized Jerseys a year ago, because they couldn't take the financial drain and the endless work routine. For several years before making the decision to sell, they struggled on next to nothing until Roger Irwin noted he made more money from his wildlife photography than from farming. In recent years, as federal dairy supports have dwindled and costs have increased, Irwin figures he made only a few bucks an hour for his labor.
Since giving up the cows, he has expanded his hobby into a business. But he worried about the land. The last thing the Irwins wanted was to see it parceled out for housing lots or turned into a retirement village. Then, last year, Bell showed up with her plan for saving prime agricultural, timber, and riparian land; she offered them participation in the Conservation Fund's Northern Connecticut River Conservation Initiative. Under the program, farmers and other landowners agree to place restrictions on their property, banning development forever, in return for a payment from the fund based on the lowered property value. Residents retain ownership of the land and can require conditions of their own - for example, allowing their children to build on the land. Each deal is uniquely designed to meet the needs of the property owner and the special features of the parcel.
Phase one of the project, funded in part by a $914,000 North America Wetlands Conservation Act grant, targets threatened wetlands and valuable habitats within the northern Connecticut River watershed, which includes most of Coos County in New Hampshire and Essex County in Vermont. The first nine farms invited into the program total 2,729 acres.
This is one of roughly two dozen environmental projects Bell is involved with. As she meets with farmers, loggers, town officials, and members of other environmental groups, Bell is also keeping tabs on the final details of the Champion International timberlands purchase, the largest multistate conservation partnership between public and private groups in US history, which she helped negotiate in 1998. It resulted in the conservation of 300,000 acres of timberland in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The agreement was controversial, because it allowed some traditional uses, like hunting and logging, to continue on selected parcels.
Meanwhile, she's continuing her effort to expand a wildlife corridor for black bears along Vermont's central spine; she's working on a host of small projects in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; and she's supporting conservation efforts as far away as Russia and Costa Rica.
"But," says Bell, "it often seems not enough. Time's running out for too many species and too many environments. There's an awful lot of work to be done." This is especially true, she says, in a post-9/11 world where "the land is one of our most essential places of solace. We need it now more than ever."
But today, there's less money for conservation from private sources and, she says, a general anticonservation atmosphere in Washington. Developers have bought millions of acres of northern timberland and farmland as investments in one of the few commodities that rarely decline in value. Thus Bell has come to see that to save the land she loves, she must work to maintain the industries that support it: sustainable timber harvesting and farming.
It's not a position she came to overnight. When Bell blazed onto Vermont's environmental scene in 1981, she "knew squat-diddly" about environmental issues and had a Pollyannaish attitude about saving every tree and every bit of undeveloped land. Negotiation was anathema, "conciliation" a dirty word. At public hearings and state-level meetings, wearing a granny dress and long braids, she represented the most idealistic segment of the environmental movement. "I was definitely a crunchy granola," she recalls.
These days, she's comfortable changing out of work boots and jeans to don a handsome suit and dress shoes before meeting the governor or wealthy donors or to attend a public meeting. And she's also learned that a little practical attention to the needs of the community is more apt to gain support for a conservation project than rabid idealism.
Her evolution from extremist slaving away at small, piecemeal projects to sophisticated negotiator with state and federal officials, private citizens, and often a smorgasbord of special-interest groups over the future of whole ecosystems parallels the natural adaptation that has occurred within the environmental movement. Like Bell, conservationism matured in the 1980s and 1990s. Economic realities and experience taught many conservationists that rather than being at costly loggerheads - both financially and emotionally - with a developer for a decade, it was better to build consensus on the future of a contested property than lose the battle outright.
"The attitude when I graduated from law school in 1975 was that business was the enemy," says Ed McMahon, vice president at The Conservation Fund. "The tactics were confront and sue. Now, we put collaboration ahead of confrontation. We've accepted that business has to be on board, not overboard."
Negotiating with business developers - and, in Bell's case, loggers, hunters, and others viewed as the enemy by environmental purists - has brought the ire of those she most admires, such as Jim Northup, president of the Vermont chapter of Forest Watch. But as she's tackled some of New England's thorniest environmental battles - including expansion at Vermont's Killington, the ski giant of the East, and the recent Champion deal - Bell's success has been undeniable; her work has led to the conservation of more than 400,000 acres. But 18-hour workdays and anger from those she once considered friends have taken their toll.
Exhausted and overwhelmed, she tried to quit her job with The Conservation Fund twice in the past year and a half. And twice, Patrick Noonan, the fund's chairman, has found a way to keep her on board. "Nancy personifies the innovation and leadership that we need in conservation today," Noonan says.
The praise has not been universal.
Vermont environmentalist Northup used to work for the US Forest Service. He quit in 1994 in opposition to federal approval of logging on National Forest land. Now with Forest Watch, Northup has become a champion of preserving as much wilderness as possible. When he learned that Bell and other environmentalists had agreed in negotiations to allow logging to continue on a small section of the Champion land in the Northeast Kingdom, he felt that an opportunity to create a big block of old-growth forest in Vermont had been lost forever. Beyond that, he says the trend toward negotiation and compromise between environmentalists and developers has jeopardized the environmental movement's ability to lobby for wilderness. He also thinks too much discussion and deal making gets done behind closed doors, where the general public and more resolute groups like his often don't have a voice.
Shortchanged in the process, says Northup, are "those without a seat at the deal makers' table - future generations and wildlife species dependent on large blocks of wild, unlogged, unroaded forests for their survival."
Born in New York City, Bell has lived most of her life in Vermont. She attended the University of Vermont but left without a degree. Her rented 100-year-old hillside cabin in Shrewsbury sits on a high plateau where spring comes a few weeks later than in the valley below. Winter comes early also. The squat house is equipped with electricity, telephone, and computer, but no television and few of the other amenities of contemporary life.
Even during the most dramatic winter storm, her place is warm, however, thanks to two wood-burning stoves. A bearskin covers a wall, the dark fur glistening. Although Bell sometimes hunts for her own food, she did not shoot this bear. Someone gave her the skin years ago. "I've eaten bear meat," she says. "It's delicious, but I wouldn't shoot a bear now." The bear has become one of her personal totems, a creature that she believes keeps her grounded and in touch with the natural world. One of her first environmental endeavors as director of the Shrewsbury Land Trust, which she founded in 1981, occurred when a quarry operator cut trees in a deer yard, a forest clearing where the animals take shelter in winter. In Vermont, deer yards are practically sacred, protected under state law. Bell successfully argued to the local environmental commission that the quarry owner had destroyed the deer yard intentionally to circumvent Vermont law - no deer yard, no cause for the state to oppose his quarry operation.
The commission agreed, fining the quarry owner and ordering him to finance conservation on land of equal environmental value and place it in perpetual protection for wildlife habitat. The order set a state precedent and established Bell as a formidable adversary.
But it was during the 13 years that Bell battled Killington Ski Area's expansion plans that she grew from naive purist to successful negotiator. It began in 1983 when Killington filed a permit to cut beech trees and create a snow-making pond on land the ski area owned in the wild and uninhabited area in Mendon, Vermont, known as Parker's Gore. Geographically, Parker's Gore is Shrewsbury's backyard. Eventually, Killington also sought state permission to dramatically expand its trail system so it could merge with the nearby Pico Ski Area.
Bell had hiked into Parker's Gore and found beech trees that were scarred with old and recent claw marks, an indication that bears had long used the area for critical fall feeding. Beyond protecting Shrewsbury's unmolested view, Bell was also committed to protecting what she considered prime bear habitat.
It took more than a decade before the deal was done. During the process, Bell developed a compromise plan that would allow Killington some of what it wanted while also protecting Parker's Gore and a wider expanse of bear habitat. It was, she says, a matter of listening to what Killington needed while refusing to sacrifice the bear's territory. In return for permission to merge with Pico and expand its network of trails in already developed areas, Killington gave the state of Vermont the 3,000-acre Parker's Gore. The ski area also gave the state $375,000 to purchase additional land to connect two sections of the Green Mountain National Forest that were frequented by black bears.
With the Killington money and additional state and federal funding, Bell was able to negotiate conservation easements with private landowners and communities whose property was routinely traversed by bears. She also purchased parcels of land outright to add to the Calvin Coolidge State Forest, a 16,000-acre tract near the community of Plymouth, Coolidge's birthplace. Today, the protected bear habitat totals 20,000 acres.
"My big ego booster," says Bell, "is to stand at the top of Okemo State Forest and look north and south along the spine of the Green Mountains and see that the habitat that Vermont's black bear needs to travel, feed, and breed safely in has been protected forever.
"That never would have happened under the old way of fighting development. By listening to what Killington needed and being more selective about what we wanted out of the deal, we both got more than we wanted," says Bell. "It's a lesson I've never forgotten."
If negotiating with Killington was tough, working on the Champion negotiations was tantamount "to finding consensus at a mud-slingers' convention," Bell says. "We had wilderness advocates who wanted little recreation and snowmobilers who wanted to quadruple their 150 miles of trails. It was nuts."
Nevertheless, by the fall of 1998, Bell had created what may be the most diverse group of collaborators in environmental history - birdwatchers and mountain bikers, snowmobilers, hikers, biologists, hunters, and local and state officials. Backed with $76 million that Bell and others with The Conservation Fund had raised, the group won the bid to purchase 300,000 acres of Champion land in three states - 19,000 acres in New Hampshire, 133,000 in Vermont, and the rest in New York.
Just as she had learned during the Killington negotiations that she could win support for bear habitat by compromising on ski expansion, Bell came to appreciate during the Champion negotiations that forestry and agriculture were the mainstays of both the economy and the ethic of the region, but that both needed help. Bell viewed the situation as a challenge and an opportunity.
The Northern Connecticut River Conservation Initiative is her way of helping to sustain the industries that will preserve the rural environment. For people like the Irwins, the agreement means a small influx of money when they sorely need it - the roof of the Irwins' 200-year-old farmhouse just needed replacing. More important than financial compensation, says Roger Irwin, is the knowledge that they are conserving "not just the land but perhaps a way of life."
"We've seen the growth of new homes up and down the river, many of them vacation homes for people who spend most of their time elsewhere," he says. "Even if none of my children decides to live on the farm, even if we end up selling it some day, this agreement with The Conservation Fund means the land stays as it is forever. There's a lot of comfort in that."
Yvonne Daley is a freelance writer. She lives in Rutland, Vermont.