Starting Sept. 1, Essex County Greenbelt Association, which helps to protect more than 19,000 acres of land across the region, will be led by a new president, Chris LaPointe.
LaPointe said he has worked in land conservation for more than 20 years, and with Greenbelt for 10 years. He is currently its vice president of conservation operations, where he has managed its land acquisition and land protection. He succeeds Kate Bowditch, who is retiring after six years as president.
Before working at Greenbelt, LaPointe said he gained experience in conservation working for a national nonprofit, the Trust for Public Land. His expertise is in natural resource planning and conservation real estate projects, which includes working with landowners to do transactions and fundraising for projects.
“I’ve always had to do a lot of work making the case for conservation and talking to folks in cities and towns about why a project was worth supporting or worth helping to fund,” he said.
Since joining Greenbelt, LaPointe has helped protect more than 6,200 acres of land, and has helped Greenbelt develop one of the region’s most innovative farm conservation programs. One of his goals is to expand that program to ensure that beginner farmers have access to farmland at an affordable rate.
LaPointe said his priority as president of Greenbelt is to find ways to serve all 34 cities and towns.
“That could be through our land conservation work, through our outreach and engagement, our hikes and our walks, or our film and lecture series,” LaPointe said. “But we really want to be a resource for all of the people in all of the communities of the county.”
LaPointe received his bachelor’s in environmental policy and planning at Colby College and a master’s in natural resource planning at the University of Vermont.
Listing a few of his hobbies as hiking and mountain biking, he said his passion for land conservation truly came when he studied it during college and gained exposure to it through his work.
He said environmental laws and issues are “constantly evolving,” but that the majority of them remain the same from when he finished school.
“I think obviously the piece that would be different today from, you know, 20-something years ago was that we weren’t talking as much about climate change,” LaPointe added.
The purpose of conservation real estate, he said, is to protect land for public access and wildlife habitat. Once Greenbelt conserves a piece of land, the goal is to ensure it is healthy and well managed, LaPointe added.
A recent example is Greenbelt’s collaboration with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and the City of Lynn to permanently protect Lynn Woods, which LaPointe said is the biggest piece of land Greenbelt has ever helped to conserve.
“Just the number of people who benefit from it, whether it’s through drinking water or public access, or just living in proximity to a 2,100-acre forest that helps to cool the city in the summer,” he said. “That’s the kind of work that we’re going to keep doing.”
On Sept. 7, in collaboration with the Lynn Museum, Greenbelt will host a hike in celebration of a year of the woods being conserved.
LaPointe said a goal is to continue forming partnerships to broaden the access of the Lynn Woods.
“We’re making sure that everyone in Lynn knows that one, this is a place for everyone, and two, we’re working to reduce barriers for folks to get outside,” he said.
