The Western New York Land Conservancy continues to gain ground in its mission to fortify the WNY Wildway – a landscape-scale conservation initiative that aims to protect and connect the largest of our region’s remaining tracts of wildlife habitat.
Linkages between large core forest areas are among the most important and vulnerable parts of the WNY Wildway.
The Land Conservancy recently announced the purchase of a 86-acre Bush property, a beautiful hardwood forest in Holland. This purchase seals the deal for its initiative to permanently protect all of the 4 for ’24 projects in southern Erie County, which equates to 155 acres of land that will not be accessible to the public. The other three land acquisitions are known as Paul (Concord), Kaiser (Concord), Wales Ravine (Wales).
“We’ve made tremendous progress with our WNY Wildway,” says Marisa Riggi, Executive Director of the Land Conservancy. “We’ve protected many important forests in recent years, including Mossy Point, the College Lodge Forest, Janet Gallogly Allegany Wildlands, and Floating Fen. But since only a small fraction of land in WNY Wildway linkages is conserved, I’m thrilled to have protected the 4 for ’24 properties. They represent a hopeful step toward creating the corridors of connectivity that wildlife requires to survive.”…