Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area

Protecting Belfast Bay for today and the Coast of Maine for tomorrow.

Our mission is to protect the FHLH conservation area and support coastal land conservation now and for future generations.

We collaborate with local citizen organizations working toward a common goal of environmental stewardship and ethical management of resources.

We provide community education around threats to ecosystem health as well as marine resource management, conservation and a sustainable blue economy.

Our long range vision is to be leaders in the work of restoring coastal and intertidal land around the Penobscot Bay to full health and vitality.

We acknowledge that the intertidal land and waters and all its critters and flora—the mergansers, the Bonaparte gulls, the mussels, razor clams, bladderwrack, and alewives—that we currently seek to protect was taken without consent from Penobscot Nation. The Penobscot, along with the other members of the Wabanaki Confederacy—the Passamaquoddy, Mig'amoc, and Maliseet—have stewarded this land and called it home since time immemorial.

We acknowledge the responsibility we bear to actively support Wabanaki sovereignty.

This land acknowledgement is only a first step and we commit to transforming the ways that we currently act that perpetuates a culture that objectifies life.

We commit to a future of the conservation area where biodiversity thrives, the waters are healthy, the fish run, the birds nest and the eelgrass returns.