LINCOLNVILLE – A new conservation easement involving 61-acre Moody Pond places 1,200 feet of shorefront and 23 forested acres in permanent protection.

The easement was contributed to Coastal Mountains Land Trust by Merrymeeting Trust. Merrymeeting Trust trustees are Merritt Blake, Peter Blake, Fred Blake, Cobb Blake, Richard Cease and David Cease.

“We feel honored to have the opportunity to place a conservation easement on the property our parents, Duane and Betty Doolittle, loved so much,” said Peter Blake in a news release. Almost all of the land will be kept in a forever-wild condition. The easement allows continued use of a rustic log boathouse-bunkhouse.

“It is a rare experience to drift a canoe across a pond in midcoast Maine that is so completely surrounded by forest, so given to the loons and brook trout,” said Scott Dickerson, executive director of Coastal Mountains Land Trust.

The new conservation easement adjoins three other projects completed by the land trust in 1991. Merrymeeting Trust donated its first conservation easement on 8.3 acres near the pond, and the McLaughlin-Pike family donated conservation easements on 28.5 acres of land that protects 850 feet of pond shorefront.

Coastal Mountains Land Trust has permanently conserved more than 3,000 acres of wildlife habitats, scenic landscapes and agricultural, forest and water resources in western Penobscot Bay since 1986.