Reflections: Fall 2025 Co-Director Update

The Multiplier Effect: The principle that one investment catalyzes another; a chain reaction wherein good begets good. 

We’re living this out in the Missisquoi, where this summer we helped multi-generation farmers protect their homestead with a conservation easement that allows them to farm and allows the river to move, shift, and change across the land, setting the river on a path towards restoration. Now we’re helping them protect another place where, with our easement, the too-wet soils will now recover their former wetlands. Downstream, where a tributary jumped its channelized banks in the 2024 floods, discovering new braided channels, we’re working with the landowner to keep it that way – to make sure the river can continue on its path to restoration.

Nearby, we’ve built an accessible path to the rivers’ edge, and now there’s talk of keeping it going – a greenway through forest and alongside wetlands that will connect the community with its river, along with the chance to protect hundreds more acres. 

It’s the multiplier effect – one conservation success begets another. 

This is the approach we’re bringing statewide via our new conservation plan, which will focus our work in a handful of watersheds over the next several years. To get there, we merged the science of fluvial geomorphology with social values mapping, and identified key places where we can lead multiple strategic projects in single places to catalyze exponentially greater benefits for healthier rivers and thriving communities – the multiplier effect.

For our rivers,

Erin and Kassia