In the past few years, the collaboration known as the Rapid Response Team for York County Conservation has been working to pursue larger-scope conservation projects in the Southern Maine region, with promising successes so far. The Rapid Response Team (RRT) is comprised of the Saco Valley Land Trust, Francis Small Heritage Trust, and the Three Rivers Land Trust, all members of SMCC. SMCC initiated this group in 2019 with a grant from an anonymous private foundation and Jess has continued to play the role of convener, facilitator, and support.

Together, the RRT members decided on a focus for their efforts – speeding resources to support large-scale land conservation projects having a regional impact specifically related to equitable access, climate resiliency, and contiguity. We know that this region’s character is threatened by continuing development, fragmentation, and disruptive land use. York County is unique and significant because it contains some of the state’s most valuable timberland, high biodiversity, accessible recreation areas, and some of the most climate-resilient landscapes. Southwestern Maine has tremendous capacity to help Maine reach its climate goals by sequestering carbon in its forests while also providing economic opportunity and ecological benefit. And yet, most of the land protection work in western York County, where these large blocks of forest remain, is pursued by the efforts of three small, minimally staffed land trusts.

In 2020, the team received funding ($180,000) from the anonymous foundation to help secure a 550-acre property now known as the Sanford Community Forest. This early funding was received by Three Rivers Land Trust early in their fundraising effort and as such not only provided resources to cover early expenses like survey and environmental assessment costs, but also served as match and proof-of-viability for other granting programs and major donors. The land trust ultimately raised about $780,000 from a variety of sources and successfully acquired the land. Without the vote of confidence and connection to early funding through the RRT, this project would have been a longer and more difficult struggle to complete, if it was successful at all.

In 2021, the RRT engaged Cheri Dunning as a Conservation Project Assistant to work with the individual land trusts and further the goals of the RRT. As part of the Cheri’s work, the Francis Small Heritage Trust successfully proposed the Porter Hills Conservation Initiative as a RRT project and received funding ($100,000) to assist the early work of this ambitious project, which has the potential to conserve up to 1,200 acres in and near the state-designated Focus Area of the Porter Hills. Cheri is now helping the land trust to apply to the Land for Maine’s Future program to assist with the same initiative.

The Saco Valley Land Trust is now also developing a conservation project to propose to the RRT, contributing to regional conservation efforts and keeping up the momentum of this collaboration. The RRT assistant is working with SVLT to structure the project and determine funding needs.

The original vision for the Rapid Response Team was a working group that increases the speed, scale, and regional impact of land conservation in southwestern Maine, with clear priorities, shared capacity, and the ability to quickly act on conservation projects that might otherwise be out of reach. So far, the RRT has had great success following that goal, and we expect and hope to see it continue.

Photo: Boards of Three Rivers Land Trust and Mousam Way Land Trust at Sanford Community Forest.

Photos: stream, bog, and wetlands in the Porter Hills Conservation Project & Sanford Community Forest.

Amanda Gorman, December 2018, presented her original “Earthrise” four-minute poem as part of a Climate Reality Project “24 hours of reality” campaign. “It is a hope that implores us at an uncompromising core to keep rising up for an Earth more than worth fighting for.”

Earthrise poem by Amanda Gorman –

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders
Snapped a photo of the earth
As Apollo 8 orbited the moon.

Those three guys
Were surprised
To see from their eyes
Our planet looked like an earthrise
A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon,
with deep oceans and silver skies.

It was our world’s first glance at itself
Our first chance to see a shared reality,
A declared stance and a commonality;

A glimpse into our planet’s mirror,
And as threats drew nearer,
Our own urgency became clearer,
As we realize that we hold nothing dearer
than this floating body we all call home.

We’ve known
That we’re caught in the throes
Of climactic changes some say
Will just go away,
While some simply pray
To survive another day;
For it is the obscure, the oppressed, the poor,
Who when the disaster
Is declared done,
Still suffer more than anyone.

Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time,

Of this, you’re certainly aware.
It’s saddening, but I cannot spare you
From knowing an inconvenient fact, because
It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait.

So I tell you this not to scare you,
But to prepare you, to dare you
To dream a different reality,

Where despite disparities
We all care to protect this world,
This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel
To muster the verve and the nerve
To see how we can serve
Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician
To make it your mission to conserve, to protect,
To preserve that one and only home
That is ours,
To use your unique power
To give next generations the planet they deserve.

We are demonstrating, creating, advocating

We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient
With the future of our youth.

And while this is a training,
in sustaining the future of our planet,
There is no rehearsal. The time is
Now
Now
Now,
Because the reversal of harm,
And protection of a future so universal
Should be anything but controversial.

So, earth, pale blue dot
We will fail you not.

Just as we chose to go to the moon
We know it’s never too soon
To choose hope.
We choose to do more than cope
With climate change
We choose to end it—
We refuse to lose.
Together we do this and more
Not because it’s very easy or nice
But because it is necessary,
Because with every dawn we carry
the weight of the fate of this celestial body orbiting a star.
And as heavy as that weight sounded, it doesn’t hold us down,
But it keeps us grounded, steady, ready,
Because an environmental movement of this size
Is simply another form of an earthrise.

To see it, close your eyes.
Visualize that all of us leaders in this room
and outside of these walls or in the halls, all
of us changemakers are in a spacecraft,
Floating like a silver raft
in space, and we see the face of our planet anew.
We relish the view;
We witness its round green and brilliant blue,
Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly:
What can we do?
Open your eyes.
Know that the future of
this wise planet
Lies right in sight:
Right in all of us. Trust
this earth uprising.
All of us bring light to exciting solutions never tried before
For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core,
To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for.