Five Questions With: Chuck Allott

Chuck Allott is executive director of the Aquidneck Land Trust, a nonprofit he helped to found in 1990 with a mission to permanently conserve the important open spaces and natural character of Aquidneck Island.
Chuck Allott is executive director of the Aquidneck Land Trust, a nonprofit he helped to found in 1990 with a mission to permanently conserve the important open spaces and natural character of Aquidneck Island.

Chuck Allott is executive director of the Aquidneck Land Trust, a nonprofit he helped to found in 1990 with a mission to permanently conserve the important open spaces and natural character of Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. In his current role since 2012, he discusses how the trust executes its mission.

PBN: Your interactive map shows everything from forests to nurseries to green space as conserved. What is the criteria for inclusion in that database?
ALLOTT:
The Aquidneck Land Trust conserves many different types of open space, with each offering very different community benefits called “conservation values.” In more urban parts of the island, we protect parks and playgrounds because a tiny park can have a huge positive impact on a child’s life. Additionally, we live in a state that is losing farmland faster than any other, so we are attempting to protect a critical mass of farms.
It’s about protecting the agricultural heritage of this island, but also about growing our own local foods. We need to save the lands with the high-quality soils necessary to keep local food production viable.
When and where it is appropriate, we also protect active recreational lands such a golf courses and sports fields. While this is a compromise that some people reject out of hand, we believe active recreational land is vitally important to a community and certainly outweighs an endless line of tract housing.
Lastly, we protect wetlands and natural habitats like forests and meadows, both to give our wildlife connected natural corridors and to also filter pollution from storm water before it reaches our drinking water reservoirs. Beyond providing wildlife habitat and filtering water at the source, protecting this land as open space also maintains the beautiful scenic landscapes of Aquidneck Island.

PBN: The Aquidneck Land Trust lists 72 properties protected, for a total of just over 2,448 acres. How many more properties are you targeting for inclusion?
ALLOTT:
With the addition of a recent acquisition, the total conserved trust land is now 73 parcels across about 2,520 acres. The trust has estimated that there are at least that many more acres of important conservation lands yet to be preserved on the island. Farms, forests, meadows, wetlands, parks, golf courses and fields all add to the greening of our community. When you look at the Google satellite aerial shots from 10,000 feet we want Aquidneck Island to be predominantly green, not grey!

PBN: As one of the founders of the land trust, what was your earliest vision for its potential and have you achieved all of your objectives yet?
ALLOTT:
When we started the trust in 1990 our mission was very reactive to what had just transpired in the previous decade on the island. We were losing hundreds of acres of farmland every year to residential and commercial development. There wasn’t any long-term planning taking place as to what should be protected in each of the three communities on the island, let alone any collaboration. Our mission was driven more by acquiring the acres and the funds to acquire the acres than it was about community planning.
While community planning and conservation through land acquisition of our open spaces is still not complete by any stretch, it is certainly on the right track. The trust’s focus is now more about community conservation and having a positive community impact beyond the acres and money raised.
How do we improve public transportation so that a resident in lower-income communities in the north end of Newport could have a community garden plot in Middletown? How much nutrient loading could one acre of designed green infrastructure eliminate from the Bailey’s Brook, and what would that mean to our drinking water quality? How can we make it easier for local farmers to farm and distribute fresh local food on the island? These are long-term questions that we are seeking to answer for the benefit of our community.

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PBN: Share an example of an organization that benefited from a gift of the Merritt Neighborhood Fund. How did use of the gift satisfy the fund’s criteria?
ALLOTT:
The example we often use in describing the benefit of the Merritt Fund is the Methodist Community Gardens on Turner Road in Middletown. Three Methodist churches on Aquidneck Island joined together to designate a place where volunteers come to grow, harvest and distribute vegetables and herbs to local food pantries and shelters for the underserved populations of the island. The community garden also raises flowers to distribute to local nursing homes, senior care centers and shut-ins. Merritt has funded the Methodist Community Garden for the last five years and has really helped this gifting garden to get off the ground and to become the successful community partner it is today.

PBN: To what extent do you rely on volunteers? And what are you doing to encourage more volunteer support?
ALLOTT:
Our volunteers work hard and they are an important part of our organization in many ways. For example, volunteers from the neighborhoods surrounding the Sakonnet Greenway Trail come together in the Adopt-a-Trail Program to each cover a piece of the 10-mile trail system. They make sure that the trails are safe and clean and ensure that they are not being misused by visitors.
Each year the stewardship department also calls on volunteers to do the annual site monitoring on many of our conserved parcels. Their role is to ensure that the terms of the conservation easement are being honored. For our special events, such as our annual Race for Open Space 5K, many students from Salve Regina University assist us with day-of logistics.
In the office, we recently sent out an annual appeal mailing where we relied heavily on volunteers to help. We wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all that we have in the past 25 years if it wasn’t for our volunteers’ time, dedication and enthusiasm for the trust. It’s together that we work towards our mission of preserving our open space for the lasting benefit of our community.

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