In late August, North Central Conservancy Trust and Doug Fields and Roxana Reitz signed NCCT’s latest conservation easement on a 65.14 acre property located in the Town of Hixon, Clark County. The Fields-Reitz easement is significant because it is the first conservation easement held by NCCT in Clark County. The Fields-Reitz easement will forever protect a mosaic of wooded and open land that provides significant habitat for wildlife and plant communities. Because of Doug and Roxana’s combined efforts, a majority of the acreage has been reforested in the forty plus years they have owned the property. Doug and Roxana stated that: “our goal has always been to utilize the land to provide a significant part of our living while actively working to ‘re-wild’ or restore a large part of it. With the help of the Conservancy, we crafted an easement that will protect the woods we are working to reestablish, while still allowing future owners to grow food, gather fuelwood and other forest products, hunt, and practice small-scale farming. Protecting and preserving our land would have been very difficult without the help of a land trust organization.”
Doug Fields and Roxana Reitz first became interested in a conservation easement in 2009. Because of the permanent nature of conservation easements it sometimes takes a number of years to tailor the terms to meet the needs of both the landowner and the land trust. The signing of the Fields-Reitz easement concluded a six year project and protected the first 65 acres in Clark County. NCCT completed three significant conservation easements protecting over 142 acres in 2015. Since NCCT’s creation in 1996 over 3,500 acres of beautiful central Wisconsin landscapes have been permanently preserved. Supporters like Doug Fields and Roxana Reitz, help NCCT ensure that central Wisconsin will remain the place many treasure, retaining its special rural character and beauty for future generations.