Mount Grace conserves 200 acres at Eagleville Barrens in Orange

ORANGE — Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust has acquired the Eagleville Barrens property, nearly 200 acres of woodlands and wetlands along the shores of Lake Rohunta in Orange and New Salem.

Open to the public, this conservation and recreation area will provide opportunities for hiking, hunting and other outdoor recreation, according to an announcement from Mount Grace on Tuesday. The land also has the potential to be restored to a pine barren habitat.

“Walking the log roads, seeing bobcat and turkey tracks, and arriving at the snow-covered lake all make for a magical journey full of potential,” said Emma Ellsworth, executive director at Mount Grace, in the announcement. “I am grateful for the extraordinary collaboration between Kestrel Land Trust, W.D. Cowls, the Trustees of Reservations, and Lyme Timber that made this project possible.”

The parcel was gifted to Mount Grace and included a financial contribution to support stewardship of the property. In 2024, Kestrel Land Trust initiated the conservation project with W.D. Cowls—an Amherst–based timber company and former owner of the land. With assistance from Lyme Timber and The Trustees of Reservations, Mount Grace advanced the project and, in December, officially accepted the transfer of the deed, permanently conserving the land.

Long managed as a working forest by W.D. Cowls, the property features a network of forest roads that can be used to create accessible, multi-use trails for people of all abilities. 

“The Eagleville Barrens and Lake Rohunta are also well-known regional birding hot spots, with exceptional diversity of birds, butterflies and dragonflies,” said Dave Small, director of conservation at Mount Grace. “By permanently protecting this land, we’re ensuring that future generations can explore, study and steward one of the North Quabbin’s most ecologically rich landscapes.”

Continued design and planning will support the development of a trail network, with the potential to create one of the longest accessible trails in the North Quabbin region.

In 2025, Mount Grace staff surveyed the land and found a mix of oak and lowbush blueberry growing among stands of white pine and eastern hemlock. The extremely poor, sandy soils contain lots of gravel – an indication of glacial outwash that was typical of the region following the melting and retreat of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 10,000 years ago.

Historically, this landscape was likely dominated by pitch pine, scrub oak, white oak, blueberry, huckleberry and warm-season grasses such as bluestem. These so-called barrens habitats looked more like open woodlands or savannah than the closed-canopy forest currently present — and were shaped by periodic fire. Over time, fire suppression and land conversion have gradually reshaped the forest and diminished the quality of habitat available to rare and threatened wildlife. 

“This landscape can be restored to a barrens community,” said Matt DiBona, director of land stewardship at Mount Grace. “In doing so, we will provide important habitat for declining species such as Eastern whip-poor-will and Barrens buckmoth.”

Initial forestry work will focus on tree removal and reducing fuel loads in preparation for the eventual reintroduction of fire to the landscape through controlled burns.