Board of Directors 2010-2011
| Alvin Chase | President | |
| David Elliott | Vice President | |
| Ken Wexler | Treasurer | |
| Marcie Porter | Secretary | |
| Stacy Benjamin | ||
| Peter Duffey | ||
| David Farmer | ||
| Bruce Hammatt | ||
| John Hufnagel | ||
| Jim Robbins |
Staff
Gail Presley, Executive Director (Email)
Gail’s childhood was spent camping, hiking, and boating all over the U.S. and Canada. Her father was a high school teacher so the family traveled every school vacation, including adventuring the entire summer. These trips infused Gail with the love of the outdoors, and especially piqued her interest in wildlife. Gail attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental and Systematic Biology. Gail worked for the California Department of Fish and Game as a wildlife biologist for 22 years. From 1998 to 2008, she guided statewide policy development for large-scale, multi-species conservation planning efforts that employ innovative approaches to balance the needs of sensitive species and habitats with the needs of land users. Gail’s areas of expertise include regional habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act, mitigation banking, and other voluntary landowner incentive programs. Although she has been a homeowner in Rockland since the mid 1990s, Gail moved to Maine full time at the beginning of 2008. She joined the Georges River Land Trust as the Executive Director in November 2008. In her spare time, Gail loves white water rafting, camping, and canoeing. Gail also inherited her father’s green thumb and enthusiastically gardens for vegetables, berries, fruit, and blooming perennials.
Linda Arnold, Administrative Assistant (Email)
From an early age, Linda has had a love of the natural world. Her summer visits to Vinalhaven, a small island in Penobscot Bay, were filled with seal sightings, hunting for pot buoys on the rocky shore, gathering mussel pearls, swimming in the cold waters with her sisters, gathering balsam for pillows and finding yellow and pink lady slippers on the “fairy path.” She attended Connecticut College, minored in Botany and over the years took classes in ornithology, wild flowers, edible plants, tree and shrub identification and all manner of gardening. She worked at Cornell Plantations in upstate New York in the Robison Herb Garden, traveled to England visiting Sissinghurst and Hidcote Manor, two gardens that inspired her for later tending many gardens in New England. A stewardship ethic naturally evolved while treating the land and all the flora and fauna upon it, with utmost care. Combined with this, Linda is a list maker and honed her organizational skills that she inherited from her mother and grandmother. Her position at GRLT as Administrative Assistant allows her to combine these aspects of stewardship with attention to detail. She lives in the watershed on Appleton Ridge and caretakes an old home with lots of birds, established perennial beds, a large vegetable garden, a Belgian work horse, six chickens, Zinnia the cat and Bella the dog.
Jay Astle, Stewardship Program Manager (Email)
Jay had the distinct pleasure of growing up in Yarmouth, Maine, where the world-famous Clam Festival blessed him with a taste for coastal living that he has yet to shake. When it finally came time to leave, Jay headed down the seaboard to Connecticut’s historic whaling center, New London, where he graduated with a degree in economics from Connecticut College. (Yes, we have three Conn College alums that work at GRLT!) Mistakenly believing that happiness lies in an investment bank, Jay traced the coastline north to Boston where he soon learned that sitting in front of a computer all day is bad for both posture and psyche. After a brief sojourn to Idaho that only served to confirm his suspicion that living without an ocean nearby is an unbearable existence, Jay found himself back in Boston, but with renewed purpose. He worked for several years at Earth Share raising money for environmental organizations, managed a Trustees of Reservations island off the coast of Salem, and then spent time with the City of Cambridge preaching the benefits of recycling while pursuing his Master’s degree in Environmental Planning at Tufts University. Jay continued his voyage back up the coast to Maine in 2007 when he came aboard as GRLT’s first Stewardship Program Manager. In this position, Jay manages the land trust’s conservation properties and has the enviable task of spending much of his time in the most spectacular sites that the region has to offer. It is no surprise that Jay lives just a stone’s throw from the ocean in Rockland.
Bruce Gerard, Trails Manager
A resident of Appleton (where he built his own home), Bruce comes to us with an extensive array of backcountry experience. In addition to his work with the National Park Service in Alaska, California and Maine, he spent time with the Appalachian Mountain Club, The Nature Conservancy and The Community School in Camden. Bruce once hiked the entire 2,638-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, a trip immortalized in part in the film "Walking the West" by Myles Murphy. As Trails Manager, Bruce is responsible for working with volunteers to maintain the existing 40 miles of the Georges Highland Path, as well as developing new trails to add to the system. He may have set a record when he first started with GRLT in 2007 by hiking nearly every step of the Path in a matter of days!
Annette Naegel, Conservation Program Manager (Email)
Annette has always enjoyed being around water. She grew up in southern Connecticut with a stream running through her backyard, where she spent many hours exploring and learning about the beauty and diversity of nature. She was hooked. In Connecticut’s coastal town of New London, she attended Connecticut College to earn a degree in developing economics but also studied with William Niering, a well-known botanist and wetland ecologist. Fortunate to have such an inspirational mentor, Annette recognized she would ultimately be led to work in the environmental field. After spending some time to work with youth, at an apple orchard and in campaigns to end world hunger, she entered the Yale School of Forestry to earn a degree in Environmental Studies. The next stop along her watery path was the coast of Maine where she took a summer position at the Island Institute preparing natural resource inventories for island owners, which also included herding flocks of sheep, developing trails and managing timber harvests. Annette eventually led their Science and Stewardship Program for the next 12 years, spending much of her time out on the water, working with island communities and landowners to manage their natural resources. In 2001, the Georges River Land Trust created its first program position in land protection. For six years Annette managed the land conservation projects as well as the stewardship efforts of this growing organization. On a part time basis she also worked as an organic gardener. She now works full time as the Conservation Project Manager. Annette loves to swim, hike, ski and generally be outdoors. She lives in Rockland and enjoys tending her own vegetable and perennial gardens.