AVON — The bright, clear afternoon skies were the perfect accent to the Central Indiana Land Trust (CILT) open house Saturday at Burnett Woods Nature Preserve.

The group has been raising money to purchase a 10.55-acre plot of land surrounded by the woods on three sides. They had until the end of October to raise the money to purchase the land.

Maria Steiner, community relations director for CILT, said they are now only about $1,000 short of the original $13,000 goal.

“We’re really, really close,” she said. “This is kind of our capstone event and celebration event. We want to close (on the property) by the end of the month.”

The group owns the nature preserve and plans to plant native trees and saplings which are similar to what’s already in the forest.

Burnett Woods Nature Preserve is off of County Road 100 South, between Dan Jones Road and C.R. 900 E. by the Light & Life Methodist Church. People who visit the preserve may park in the church parking lot and walk across to the entrance of the preserve.

The purchase price of the land is $309,000, with the bulk of the money being donated by the Indiana Heritage Trust, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Conservation Fund’s Rocky Express Migratory Bird Account, Duke Energy, and the Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society. Steiner said they also had individual donors from the community, as well.

Heather Bacher, executive director of CILT, said the new land would not only fill in a large chunk in the middle of the forest, but is also essential to keeping green space in Hendricks County.

“We think it’s critical,” she said. “Obviously, at one time, this was a very open area, but now there’s commercial, residential, and soon to be industrial development here. This is a last vestige of nature in this highly commercial landscape.”

Cliff Chapman, conservation director for CILT, said the woods are very unique to the area.

“Burnett Woods is very significant as a high quality remnant of a flat woods community, which was the dominant settlement land of Indiana,” he said. “It was also easiest to convert to agriculture, it’s rare to find a piece this intact. With the open field in the middle of the preserve, there was what we call edge effect, which impacts the preserve and we’ve been fundraising vigorously in 2009 to plant it back to native trees.”

Chapman also said a large portion of the money the group has collected — $211,000 — came from the Indiana Heritage Trust, and came directly from sales of environmental license plates.

“It’s been a beautiful public-private partnership,” he said. “We’re estimating about $18,000 to pre-treat the field, buy and plant trees.”

Burnett Woods was formed in 1998 when Ruth Burnett’s family sold the land to CILT. Jesse Burnett, Ruth’s son, was on hand for the open house and said his mother would be happy to see the progress.

“That’s the one thing she wanted (to preserve the forest) and for years it was classified as a forest, but she wanted it preserved,” he said. “Now adding to it, I don’t know if it ever would have crossed her mind. I’m just glad I was part of something that preserves something. It tickles me to be a part of it. The whole business would have been just what she wanted.”

Burnett Woods is open from dawn to dusk.

For more information on Burnett Woods, call 631-5263 or visit the website at www.conservingindiana.org.



charlee.beasor@flyergroup.com