The Appalachian Mountain Club has secured funding needed to completely manage and own nearly 130,000 contiguous acres of forestland in Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness.
The AMC announced two years ago that it had purchased and planned to conserve the 29,000-acre Barnard Forest in Piscataquis County. The area is adjacent to more than 100,000 acres that AMC already owns.
Now, President and CEO Nicole Zussman said the AMC has the funding needed to own the land entirely, and manage and improve the area so that the public can use it for the first time in about two decades.
"We will immediately be rebuilding the roads, rebuilding the trails. It will be open to the community for all types of recreation, ranging from hiking to biking to ATVing, for anglers for fishing," she said.
The AMC purchased the northern half of the Barnard Forest outright two years ago. The Conservation Fund purchased the southern half with the Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation. AMC completed a $20 million fundraising campaign to buy the southern half. A $10 million donation from MathWorks, a math computing software company, allowed the AMC to finish fundraising about two years early, Zussman said.
