Mountain Lands
The College Mountain Lands extend from the Middlebury River Gorge to the crest of the Green Mountains at the Snowbowl. A conservation easement donated to the Vermont Land Trust protects the Bread Loaf campus, Rikert Outdoor Center, and additional mountain lands totaling approximately 2,100 acres of forest and field.
A conservation easement is a primary tool of private lands conservation in the United States. Vermont Land Trust (VLT) holds the development and certain management rights, while the College is bound to use the lands only for purposes of natural ecological values, education, and outdoor recreation. Easements are a powerful conservation tool because they are upheld by law, last forever, and provide a high level of certainty for the future management of land.
The easement allows for the lands, including those of the Rikert Outdoor Center, to be utilized as educational and outdoor recreation resources and as a campus while also serving as an ecological preserve. The Middlebury Snowbowl, while part of the Mountain Lands, is not included in the easement.
Since an easement is effectively permanent, the VLT, the College, and The Nature Conservancy collaboratively crafted a complex easement that meets the present-day uses and values and is a flexible instrument in perpetuity.
The easement contains four primary goals:
- Maintaining ecological integrity and ecosystem functions.
- Conserving and protecting outdoor recreational resources.
- Conserving and protecting the educational mission of the property.
- Preventing use or development that would adversely affect the above three goals.