Today, the Nature Conservancy (TNC) announced the permanent conservation of coastal properties on Block Island and in South Kingstown, totaling 11 acres of critical wildlife habitat along the Rhode Island shoreline.
On Block Island, TNC purchased a five-acre property on Corn Neck Road, across from the Fred Benson Town Beach. Located on the northeast corner of Trim’s Pond and divided into 26 tiny lots, the land helps protect clean water in the immediate area, and also in the Great Salt Pond, which is connected to it by tidal flow.
The property’s salt marsh and mudflats are spawning areas for horseshoe crabs and provide excellent habitat for migratory shorebirds and wading birds, including egrets, American oystercatchers, black-bellied plovers and greater yellowlegs. The adjacent shallow waters are important feeding areas for sea ducks that breed in the Arctic but spend the winter around Block Island.
The Block Island Land Trust contributed $700,000 toward the $1 million purchase price and will hold a conservation easement over the property, providing additional legal protection. The Block Island Conservancy provided a $100,000 grant in exchange for the right to enforce the conservation easement, if necessary. Gifts from individual TNC donors covered the remaining balance.
In South Kingstown, TNC recently protected six beachfront acres in the Green Hill community, next to the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge, through the donation of a conservation easement.
The land is composed mostly of healthy shrubland and coastal grassland habitat. The property also has frontage on Moonstone Beach, one of Rhode Island’s most important and productive nesting areas for least terns and piping plovers, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Under a conservation easement, the development rights are transferred to a conservation organization, protecting the property permanently, although the land remains in private ownership. The donor previously conserved 8 acres of abutting land in partnership with the South Kingstown Land Trust. TNC is very grateful to the donor for their generosity and commitment to wildlife conservation.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) assisted a What’sUpNewp journalist with the reporting included in this story.
