Nature Conservancy

Northrop Camp is located on approximately 300 acres in southwest Massachusetts. (maps).
In addition to providing camping facilities, this land is also home to a wide variety of life.

The Nature Conservancy is a large organization dedicated to protecting nature for our future ( Nature Conservancy). In 2006, we started serious negotiations with The Nature Conservancy about signing a Conservation Restriction with them.  As early as 1997, on a trip to camp with two other board members, Judy Lukin and Susan Argutto, we had spoken about the possibility of a CR with Frank Lowenstein of The Nature Conservancy.  It took more than four years of tough negotiations, but we finally signed the CR and received the funds in December 2010.  All of the property would be restricted, but for 10 acres around the camp itself and the pool, the restrictions would be very mild, and would not prevent us from running the camp the way we used to. These funds were a good start for an endowment.

According to Frank Lowenstein of the Nature Conservancy:
"The most ecologically critical lands that the camp owns are those west of the road (the parcel that abuts the New York state border on the west). This parcel includes several rare natural communities, including hickory-oak-sedge woodland and a talus slope woodland. Within these and other communities are found several rare species including the purple clematis (a large and showy-flowered native vine), the smooth and lyre-leaved rock cresses (delicate mustard family plants that grow on cliffs and boulders), the tiny-flowered buttercup, the downy arrowwood (a shrub), the sandbar cherry, and the violet wood sorrel. This is a large concentration of rare species, and my strong expectation is that further survey work will document additional rarities. The habitat is in suberb shape and of a type that supports several rare species of plants."