Land in Sayler Park once known as the Pessler farm is getting a new purpose: conservation. The Western Wildlife Corridor has officially established the land as the Sisson Nature Preserve.
"We're excited to be able to restore and protect these woods," says Executive Director Matt Trokan. "The owners of the property wanted to see their land protected instead of being developed into housing or commercial area, so they reached out to Western Wildlife Corridor to see what we could do, and we were able to raise money in order to purchase the 19 acres."
The Sisson Nature Preserve is located near the intersection of Hillside and Monitor avenues, and across from Sayler Park School. The 19-acre preserve connects with two existing Western Wildlife Corridor preserves: Buckeye Trace and Muddy Creek.
"It's a semi-mature hardwood forest," Trokan explains. "There is restoration that needs to be done, but there's a lot of great plants and animals. There's already a lot of diversity, and it is adjacent to a lot of other green space, so hopefully we will be able to eventually put trails in there to allow people to fully enjoy the area."
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The preserve is named in honor of Tim Sisson, a long-time volunteer and former Western Wildlife Corridor president. The group applied for and received a Clean Ohio Grant to purchase an additional four acres next to the property. Trokan expects that purchase will close in the spring.
Trokan says the addition of the preserve helps Western Wildlife Corridor in its land preservation mission. The Corridor is a non-profit land trust founded in 1992. It owns, protects or manages more than 400 acres of greenspace. The aim is to create a wildlife corridor that extends from downtown Cincinnati to the Ohio/Indiana border.
The nonprofit is nearly there. In November it purchased a parcel of land to add to the planned Riverside Nature Preserve in the community of Riverside.
"Protecting this hardwood forest brings us one step closer to creating a new Riverside Nature Preserve and completing the wildlife corridor from downtown Cincinnati to the Indiana border," Trokan writes in an online blog post.
