By Ben Shadley
Photography by Richard Fields, John Maxwell & Ben Shadley
A spring peeper frog blends into fallen Wildwood NP leaves. Spring peepers' jingle-bell wetland
chorus signals the beginning of spring at the new 238-acre preserve in Kosciusko County.
Once damaged, developed or polluted, our precious wild lands are likely gone forever. Places devoid of human handiwork are just as important for many Hoosiers as the suburbs and cities in which they live. Sometimes the plight of our forests, streams and meadows seems bleak, but the DNR isn’t standing by idly.
The Indiana Heritage Trust (IHT) has been working since 1992 to protect our state’s precious natural resources. The IHT doesn’t try to convince landowners to conserve their land. It doesn’t lobby big business to lower its environmental impact. It does nothing like that.
The IHT goes one better.
To date, the IHT has purchased (or procured conservation easements for) almost 50,000 acres of select land in more than half of Indiana’s counties for conservation purposes. Few methods of land preservation are more effective than the deed being in the hand of a dedicated owner. That’s the idea behind the IHT.
The driving force behind the IHT is the environmental license plate. The sun-and-eagle plates are usurped in popularity only by the standard-issue plates.
According to Nick Heinzelman, executive director of the IHT, the Natural Resources Foundation and the DNR’s Division of Land Acquisition, 2006 was a good year for the IHT. Last year the IHT completed more than 40 projects, both old and new. Compared to previous years, the IHT significantly increased the number of projects completed. But it had help.
