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Here’s a couple of informative updates reprinted from local newspapers:

Three Rivers Trust Gets Assistance
By Jonathan Cook, The Sanford News

ACTON — For Tom Cashin, it all started when local orchards were sold and houses bloomed where apple blossoms once did.

The sight of so many new houses motivated Cashin and others to form Three Rivers Land Trust, a non-profit corporation that wants to help landowners who hope to keep their land from being developed.

With little money to buy land so far, Three Rivers is relying on landowners to donate their development rights to the Trust. 

Jean Noon, one of the founding members of Three Rivers, says many landowners can keep land in their families longer due to the lowered tax rate. That provides some motivation to set aside acreage, but Three Rivers emphasizes the Trust may not always lack the funds many landowners want and need in order to spare open land. 

Toward that goal, the Trust has recently received help. At a January 8th meeting, Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission (SMRPC) Director Paul Schumacher presented the results of a mapping project done by the Planning Commission. The maps show prime farm land, animal and plant life population, and other information. Overlaid on tax parcel maps, the six areas merge in the five towns of Lebanon, Sanford, Alfred, Acton and Shapleigh, where the group wants to focus its efforts. Schumacher says the maps are important to the Trust because they will help them in applying for state and municipal funding.
Three Rivers trustee Gary Lamb says area residents should know that their region offers the most diversity of wildlife in the northeast.

Glenn Wildes of Sanford lauded the effort because “Now we have a tool with which we can make the general population aware of the resources out their back door.”

And awareness of the general population is something trustees want when approaching towns with their plans. “You need to have everybody working from the same page to avoid surprises when developers apply for building permits,” Schumacher told trustees. 

Named for the Mousam, Ossipee and Salmon Falls rivers, the Trust began in 2000 with the objective “to preserve and protect forever...valued natural resources.” Now, three years later, planners hope the maps of natural areas deemed important will enable the trust to continue its mission to preserve open spaces in southern Maine.