Read below for an essay excerpted from 50 Remarkable Years, 50 Remarkable People, Wildlands’ 50th anniversary book honoring the partners and volunteers who have made remarkable contributions to land conservation in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Read “The Next Remarkable Chapter,” our series introduction by President Karen Grey.
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For over 25 years, Wildlands Trust has helped faith-based groups permanently protect the lands they cherish. Across seven projects, we have conserved 590 acres of land previously held by religious schools, temples, convents, and spiritual retreat centers.
The Dominican Sisters of Peace, an order of Catholic nuns in Plainville, have been our trusted advisors in this work. Led by Sister Chris Loughlin, the Dominican Sisters of Peace and several lay board members launched the Religious Lands Conservation Project in 2005 to encourage the protection of religious lands and to advise land trusts in their work with spiritual organizations.
Chris Loughlin was a visionary who inspired all who knew her. Always in a quiet, measured tone, Chris spoke passionately about land conservation and never gave up on a protection opportunity, especially when it came to the land of her own convent, the Crystal Spring Center for Ecology, Spirituality, and Earth Education. Chris died in 2022, but Sister Barbara Harrington and Crystal Spring board member Kathy McGrath picked up the mantle to ensure that Chris’ decades-long quest to protect the land at Crystal Spring ended in success.
Barbara and Kathy carried out the final and most complicated chapter of the project, which involved significant legal work, the approval of the Dominican Order, and the assent of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 2023, the Dominican Sisters of Peace gifted 37 acres of the Crystal Spring campus to Wildlands Trust, thus creating Crystal Spring Preserve, Wildlands’ first property in Plainville.
Purchase 50 Remarkable Years, 50 Remarkable People today: wildlandstrust.org/shop50