The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is starting off the new year with new land: more than 31 acres at Cedar Tree Neck in West Tisbury have been donated to the foundation, a gift from the Hough family.

The donated land, called the George A. Hough preserve, includes oak and American beech forest, cranberry bogs, glacial erratic boulders and stone walls. Sheriff’s Meadow executive director Adam Moore told the Gazette Tuesday that the new property will connect the 62-acre Fishhook section of the sanctuary, donated by the Houghs in the 1960s and 1970s, with land near the top of Indian Hill.

The land has been held in a conservation restriction since 1992; in late December it was donated outright to Sheriff’s Meadow by members of the Hough family.

“It’s a great addition,” Mr. Moore said. “It has been something that we’ve been working on for some time. We are very grateful to the Hough family.”

One of the oldest conservation properties on the Vineyard, the sanctuary at Cedar Tree Neck was begun by the late Henry Beetle and Elizabeth Bowie Hough, publishers and editors of the Gazette who were ardent conservationists. The original gift, in 1959, was a piece of land called the Pond Lot. It included a vernal pool named Lake Elizabeth in honor of Mrs. Hough.

“Then the Houghs gave more land over the years,” Mr. Moore said. The sanctuary features an unspoiled, salt-blasted coastal forest with freshwater streams that run down to a wide sandy beach fronting the Island’s rugged north shore. “All those gifts, it’s been a real legacy of conservation that the family has given us over the decades of their stewardship,” Mr. Moore said.

The gift brings Sheriff’s Meadow holdings at Cedar Tree Neck to 391.4 acres; more than 93 of those acres have been donated by the Hough family.

The new preserve is named for George A. Hough, the father of Henry Beetle and George A. Hough Jr. Mr. Moore said a connector trail will be created, likely sometime in 2015.

Mr. Moore said Sheriff’s Meadow has been working quietly with the Hough family to bring about the recent gift. He thanked George A. Hough 3rd, Mary Pat Hough-Greene, John Hough Jr., Mary Louise Hough, Julia Hough, Margaret Hough Russell and William H. Hough for the land donation.