Massachusetts Non-Profit Helps Permanently Protect and Open Public Access to Important Martha’s Vineyard Property
The scenic and ecologically diverse Red Gate Farm on Martha’s Vineyard will be renamed the Squibnocket Pond Reservation and will be forever protected from the threats of land development. Photo credit: Frankie Dronin via the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation
The Wyss Foundation and its chairman, Hansjörg Wyss, have agreed to provide $1.5 million, including $1 million in matching funds, to a fundraising effort led by the Martha’s Vineyard-based land conservation group Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation to help purchase, protect, and ensure permanent public access onto 304 acres of beautiful land along Squibnocket Pond in Aquinnah, Massachusetts.
The land being protected is a portion of the nearly 400-acre Red Gate Farm property. Red Gate Farm was purchased in 1978 by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and is now owned by her daughter Caroline B. Kennedy and her husband Edwin Schlossberg. The land has been described by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program as among the most important natural areas in the entire state.
The $27 million deal, which was announced in September after the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation and the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank entered into a purchase-and-sale agreement with the Kennedy-Schlossberg family, is set to be finalized in December. To support the fundraising effort, and to inspire others to give, Hansjörg Wyss and the Wyss Foundation have committed $1.5 million – including $1 million as a matching grant to fulfill the needs of the final sale.
“To set foot on this property is to be transported to a time before roads and homes dotted Martha’s Vineyard,” said Hansjörg Wyss, philanthropist and chairman of the Wyss Foundation. In 2018, Wyss launched the Wyss Campaign for Nature, committing $1 billion to accelerate the pace and scale of conservation worldwide. “As a society, we have to commit ourselves to protecting more nature in the public trust so that everyone has a chance to experience and explore the great outdoors.”
After closing later this year, 304 acres of the scenic and ecologically diverse Red Gate Farm will be renamed the Squibnocket Pond Reservation and will be forever protected from the threats of land development. The Kennedy-Schlossberg family will retain a small portion of the property, including the home sites.
The new nature reserve on Martha’s Vineyard will permanently safeguard an incredibly rare assemblage of land, wildlife, water, and oceanfront. The undisturbed lands and waters – which have been carefully managed by the family for more than four decades now – provide habitat for a variety of rare, threatened and federally-protected species, including the Arethusa orchid and the northern harrier hawk. The conservation land will protect outstanding habitats, including moors, sand dunes, heathlands, forests, freshwater ponds, and forests. What’s more, the public will now have permanent access to a half-mile of Atlantic Ocean beach, a mile of shoreline along the Squibnocket Pond, and a network of trails.
In a recent interview in the Vineyard Gazette, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation Board President Peter Getsinger stressed the importance of donations to the land organization at this time, “We’ve got a race on right now, it’s a race between conservation and…against the development that is on the rise.”
The lands being protected through this effort were particularly near and dear to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, wrote in a letter to the Martha’s Vineyard community that was published in the Vineyard Gazette in 2019:
“She loved the old stone walls, the blue heron that lived in the pond behind the dunes, the hunting cabin that was the only thing on the property when she acquired it, the clay cliffs, the Wampanoag legends… Together we wove the traditions of summer across three generations – setting lobster pots in Menemsha Pond, entering the Fair and never winning, growing a vegetable garden, bringing home the best shell from the beach every day...”
Thanks to the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation and the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank – and to the Kennedy-Schlossberg family – these experiences, natural wonders, and beauty won’t be lost to development.
Photo Gallery: The Future Squibnocket Pond Reservation
