In the Spring of 2011, The Kestrel Trust merged with the Valley Land Fund (see history of VLF below). As a result, Kestrel has recently expanded our service area to a 19-town region covering the central Connecticut River Valley radiating from Amherst and Northampton. As part of this process, we also slightly changed our name to Kestrel Land Trust. 

The Kestrel Trust was founded in 1970 as a charitable trust dedicated to local land conservation in Amherst. During the first half of Kestrel’s organizational history, the Trust functioned effectively as a volunteer-led group, which primarily assisted Amherst’s Conservation Commission. By the mid-80s, Kestrel had expanded to the surrounding eight towns to keep up with the increasing development threats and to protect watersheds and provide trails and passive recreation areas. In the late 1990s, Kestrel initiated a deliberate effort to increase its capacity to protect land by expanding community outreach, and hiring part time staff and then a half-time executive director. This modest expansion over the last five years made a big difference on the ground. In the last five years as a staffed organization, Kestrel tripled its rate of land conservation to an average of 300 acres/year. In 2010, the Amherst Chamber of Commerce recognized Kestrel with the Award for Environmental Leadership. 

The Valley Land Fund, Inc began in 1986 as an ad hoc effort to prevent development of a 50-acre strawberry field in Montague, Massachusetts. VLF soon expanded to work in over 50 communities across Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden counties. With a board composed of several key state-agency conservation leaders who understood the need to act more quickly than government generally can when opportunities become available, VLF saved more than 9,000 acres, including pristine mountain ranges, forestlands, historic family farms, wetlands, and essential wildlife habitat. In the 1990s, Valley Land Fund had an active bridge loan fund of more than $1 million, which helped save hundreds of acres by buying them, holding them temporarily, and then selling the land to farmers or to government agencies to secure their protection forever.

About Kestrel’s Merger with Valley Land Fund

Kestrel and Valley Land Fund have been collaborating on land conservation projects for 25 years and have a total of 65 years’ experience in the field; collectively we have protected more than 14,000 acres of wildlife habitat, woodlands, prime farmland and scenic vistas in the Pioneer Valley. Merging with Valley Land Fund will allow us to better meet the challenges of land protection in the Valley over the next decade. 

Merging will allow us to accelerate the pace of land conservation in the most rapidly developing and changing areas in the Valley by focusing our strategic priorities; expanding our professional capacity; capturing the talents of both boards; and promoting organizational efficiency. Although VLF will no longer be a presence in some areas, we are confident that other land trusts will be able to work effectively in areas previously covered by VLF. 

Throughout our history, our mission remained the same—to work with landowners, governmental agencies, citizen groups, and other organizations to protect land, including farmland, woodlands, wildlands, wildlife habitat, water resources, historic landscapes, rare and endangered species habitat, and scenic vistas in the heart of the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts.