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Nature Conservancy Prohibits Dogs in Turtle Creek Preserve

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has taken steps it says are intended to reduce the intensive use at its Turtle Creek Nature Preserve, a 93-acre parcel at the border of Essex and Old Saybrook. A few months ago, TNC Director of Land Management David Gumbart told First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., that TNC had closed the Turtle Creek Preserve to dogs, and now visitors seeking to walk the preserve’s trails also will have fewer places to park.

According to Gumbert, the Turtle Creek Nature Preserve was intended, according to the original deed, for scientific, educational and aesthetic purposes. In recent years, intensive use by individuals walking their dogs had adversely impacted those goals. Neighbors also reported to TNC that traffic associated with the area’s use had become a hazard.

TNC has recently blocked off some of the preserve’s prior parking spots with large stones, a measure that will likely limit the number of users.

TNC’s website www.nature.org describes the Turtle Creek Preserve as follows: “This preserve has about a mile of trail through mountain laurel thickets and beech groves, and along a cove on the Connecticut River. Straddling the Essex/Old Saybrook town line, the preserve occupies the mouth of Turtle Creek, a tidal estuary whose channel supports wild rice and eel grass.”

Due to its Watrous Point Road location on the Essex/Old Saybrook town line, the preserve’s closure to canines and the closure of some parking spaces for the preserve will require those walkers who want to use the open space to plan ahead. If the parking area is full, they may have to seek other trails.