FRANKLIN COUNTY, ME (June 21, 2018)—Grant support from the Open Space Institute (OSI) has led to the protection of nearly 10,000 acres of land along the Appalachian Trail in the mountains of Western Maine. The project, spearheaded by The Trust for Public Land (TPL), will help support Maine’s growing outdoor recreation economy, while protecting critical habitat for the Northeast’s most imperiled songbird and other species along the US-Canadian border.
The newly-protected 9,580-acre Redington Forest tract includes forests, streams and ridgelines. OSI’s decade-old Transborder Fund, the only private conservation fund focused on cross-border wildlife migration along the US-Canada divide, supported this key project. The Fund has been effective in helping conserve an assemblage of land in the area along the Appalachian Trail, including neighboring Crocker Mountain, conserved in 2013, and nearby Orbeton Stream, protected in 2015.