Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University in New York city, will deliver a lecture at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown on Tuesday, July 8, at 7:30 p.m.

Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is applying this year for accreditation from the The Land Trust Accreditation Commission, a lengthy process involving information gathering and documentation.

The decision ends a bitter dispute over ownership of a three-acre parcel of land in Chilmark. Nisa Counter and Benjamin Ramsey bought the lot on Blue Barque Road in 2010 from a family member. Sheriff’s Meadow said the land was part of a 10-acre parcel gifted by the late C. Russell Walton.

Come summer, visitors can admire the old ice pond from new viewing platforms and walk around the pond towards John Butler’s Mudhole on new boardwalks as Sheriff's Meadow gets makeover.

In Massachusetts, land used by a charitable organization qualifies for a tax exemption under state law. But a recent case in the town of Hawley, now going before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, could have wide implications.

The foundation bought the 1.7-acre property on Nov. 19 for $35,416, a press statement said. The seller was the family of Josephine Smalley Vanderhoop. The purchase will help conserve rare habitat, Sheriff's Meadow said.

Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is the local land trust for the Island of Martha’s Vineyard. Our mission is to conserve the natural, beautiful, rural landscape and character of Martha’s Vineyard for present and future generations. We are governed by a board of directors which represents the year-round and seasonal communities of the Island. We own 2,000 acres of conservation land across the Island, including land in each of the six Island towns. We protect another 850 acres of land with conservation restrictions.

Take a look at a Vineyard book shelf and you’re likely to find The History of Martha’s Vineyard by Charles Banks or Moraine to Marsh by Anne Hale. For conservationists, Aldo Leopold’s book A Sand County Almanac published in 1949 is equally iconic. “I think anybody can be inspired by what he wrote,” Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation director Adam Moore said this week. “It’s one of the key pieces of literature in our environmental history in this country.”

Tucked among the red cedars, black oaks and white oaks at Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary stand six Atlantic white cedars, barely two feet tall.

Last year Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation planted 12 of these cedars at the sanctuary as part of a restoration project; the tree is said to be native to the Vineyard, according to executive director Adam Moore.

The Vineyard could see as many as 7,032 more homes on its 17,475
remaining acres of developable land, officials from the state Executive
Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) said at an Island forum held
Thursday night.

"That's a relatively short time frame to be faced with
some tough choices," said Christian Jacqz, director of
Massachusetts Geographic Information System, in a presentation to Island
officials at the Howes House in West Tisbury.