Housatonic Valley Association Awards Local Environmental Heroes
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — At the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA) Annual Meeting and Holiday Party on Dec. 12, 2025, the nonprofit organization presented the Louis and Elaine Hecht Follow the Forest Award to Kathy Orlando of the Sheffield Land Trust and Grant Bogle of Tom's Hill and Miles Mountain at The Silo in New Milford, Conn.
The award celebrates the legacy of longtime conservation leaders, HVA board member Lou Hecht and his wife Elaine. It recognizes individuals who embrace and advance a collaborative vision of protected, connected wildlife habitat in the spirit of HVA's model, which brings together diverse partners to accomplish a shared goal.
A collaborative of more than 50 organizations, the Follow the Forest initiative works to protect a connected woodland corridor across the Housatonic Valley, through eastern New York and north through Vermont to Canada.
"Although HVA is defined by a watershed, we are not limited by it," said Tim Abbott, HVA's executive director. "We are also interested in all the organizations we work with who care deeply about helping achieve great, lasting conservation."
The 2025 awards presentation focused on the recent successes of the Cooper Hill Conservation Alliance—a partnership of eight conservation organizations (including HVA), a realtor and a local farming family working to conserve more than 1,200 acres in Ashley Falls, MA, and Salisbury, Conn.
"This is a once-in-a-generation environmental success," said Julia Rogers, HVA's conservation director, "and it wouldn't be possible without Kathy Orlando, executive director of the Sheffield Land Trust."
Orlando and her team at the Sheffield Land Trust were instrumental in the formation of the alliance and the success of the conservation project. They recognized there was an opportunity to make protection of the farmland in Massachusetts more impactful if it included two large parcels in Connecticut.
"This is about all the volunteers and the committees of those eight organizations," said Orlando. "There is no way that I could have done what I did without these partners. It is really everybody's time, energy and effort, and their networking, that makes all of this possible."
Bogle and the two groups of private donors who came together to secure 560 acres of vulnerable and significant properties in Salisbury, Conn. were also awarded the Louis and Elaine Hecht Follow the Forest Award. This effort was indispensable to the success of the Cooper Hill Conservation Alliance project. While the Salisbury Association Land Trust secured state, federal and additional private funding, Bogle helped gather private pledges and negotiate the purchase of these critical lands. Tom's Hill, nearly 300 acres overlooking East Twin Lake, has now passed into conservation ownership, and Miles Mountain is scheduled for permanent protection in 2026.
Bogle said that this conservation effort has been transformative for the community.
"I think it is tremendous for the watershed," he said. "There's a lot more that we are thinking about and able to do now, and it wouldn't have happened without the Sheffield Land Trust and HVA."
Also honored with HVA's Charles Downing Lay Environmental Leadership Award was Rebecca Neary—an HVA board member and president of the Warren Land Trust.
"Named for HVA's founder, the Charles Downing Lay Award recognizes someone who is singularly impactful for the conservation of our special region," said Abbott. "It's a lifetime achievement superhero award, and Rebecca Neary, indomitable champion of community-based and strategic land conservation, embodies that spirit and depth of impact."
"HVA has been instrumental in getting all of us to think more collaboratively with one another because we are in service of the same mission," says Neary. "That is HVA's overarching vision, and what it works diligently with its incredible team to achieve. So, it's my great honor to be a part of that organization and to serve this incredible cause," she said.
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