In Perpetuity

The Clear Lake community celebrates Earth Day this week.  Locally, Jan Lovell heads up the Earth Day effort, which has grown to more than a week of activities sharing a common goal of  caring for and celebrating our home and our world.   She rightly points out the lake’s restoration was an impetus for starting the first Clear Lake Earth Day. 

Twenty-three years ago this June, Lovell’s family took remarkable action.  They partnered with the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation to draft a conservation easement which permanently protects the vast Lone Tree Point Nature Area to ensure it can never be developed. Owners continue to maintain and manage the area and it remains on the tax rolls, but public access is allowed for non-consumptive uses such as bird watching, hiking, cross country skiing, wildlife observation and photography.  Visitors are asked to take litter with them, stay on footpaths and observe prohibited uses of campfires, hunting/trapping and motorized vehicles so the natural integrity of the area will be maintained.  The Nature Area provides habitat for bald eagles, owls, herons, wild turkeys, whitetail deer, red fox and a plethora of birds.

In 2003, work began on the Sisters’ Prairie restoration project of over 190 acres, again driven by the Connell and Lovell families.  The wetlands and prairie habitat have a significant impact on lake water quality by filtering nutrients and sedimentation from surrounding farmland.  It also provides excellent wildlife habitat.  The family worked with the Cerro Gordo County office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service to ensure permanent protection as a Wetland Restoration Project.  The family donated an easement to the Cerro Gordo County Conservation Board for a 1.1 mile bike trail which meanders through the prairie. The farm and the prairie continue to be privately owned, so bicyclists and hikers are asked to stay on the trail.  

Today, Jan Lovell serves as Board of Directors Chair for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation.  As that group marked its 35th anniversary year in 2014, she shared this personal message about choosing to protect our resources and preserve natural places to explore and discover.   It’s worth remembering, and being thankful for, on Earth Day and everyday.

“Our family felt a special kinship with land we owned in the Lone Tree Point area-- 101 acres of woods on Clear Lake’s south shore.  Yet, after my grandmother passed away the IRS decided that its “highest and - Read More Via e-Edition