The Finger Lakes Land Trust (FLLT) purchased 34 wooded acres in the town of Italy, Yates County, near the south end of Canandaigua Lake. The parcel was identified as a priority for protection due to its strategic “puzzle-piece” location between lands owned by the FLLT and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

With road frontage on South Hill and Sunnyside roads, the property is situated between the FLLT’s Great Hill Preserve/Nundawao and the state-owned High Tor Wildlife Management Area (WMA) and shares a boundary with each. It is also directly across from the FLLT’s West River Preserve, a 64-acre conservation area that is managed for grassland bird habitat. Similar to the Great Hill Preserve, the newly acquired parcel features high-quality oak-hickory deciduous forest and numerous ephemeral creeks that flow down the forested hillside into the West River.

The property is located in the center of the green hill that slopes down the right side of the photo. Photo: Bill Hecht

The FLLT intends to transfer the property to New York State as an addition to the 6,800-acre High Tor WMA, expanding public conservation land at the south end of Canandaigua Lake. Figuring prominently in the creation story of the Seneca Nation, lands in this area are revered by the Seneca as the birthplace of their people.

These lands are also located within the proposed Hemlock to High Tor Greenway—an ambitious effort by the Finger Lakes Land Trust and its partners to create a corridor of conservation lands extending from the shores of Hemlock Lake in the west to High Tor Wildlife Management Area and the community of Naples in the east. Conserving this intact corridor will allow for the continued movement of wildlife through the area while also protecting recreational resources such as the Bristol Hills Trail, a branch of the Finger Lakes Trail.