Holiday Gift Ideas
Winter holidays may be months away, but the Hansville Greenway is ready now with the perfect gift. You can donate toward preserving a 10-acre patch of forest for wildlife and protecting it from development.
The $230,000 price tag may stagger some nature lovers, but the Greenway plans to accept donations of all sizes, giving everyone a chance to participate. Donate in the name of your kids, parents, friends, neighbors, yourself, and you can all claim the title of conservation crusader.
The land for sale is a forested corridor between Lower and Upper Hawk’s Ponds. The landowner could have built on the parcel or sold it to a developer, but preservation was his priority. The Hansville Greenway is the only buyer he wants.
“We’ve been given exclusive right to purchase the acreage,” says Michael Szerlog, president of the Hansville Greenway Association.
No new hiking trail is in the works. The Greenway’s plan is to preserve an unobstructed wildlife corridor between the Lower and Upper Hawk’s Ponds. No new homes will replace beaver lodges that rise from both ponds. No one will log three acres of fairly old cedar and red alder trees that serve as homes for owls, woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, bears and more. Coyotes, beavers, frogs and salamanders will roam free.
The Greenway hopes to raise the money by Dec. 31. Kitsap County will own the land and the Hansville Greenway will care for it. To donate, visit the Great Peninsula Conservancy Hansville Greenway Hawks’ Ponds Campaign page, https://greatpeninsula.org/property/hansville-greenway-hawks-ponds-campaign/.
Cynthia Taggart