HEBRON — The Western Foothills Land Trust has protected 113 acres of forestland in Hebron that includes some rare American Chestnut trees.

Lee Dassler, program director of the Land Trust, said Ann Siekman, retired director of the Norway Memorial Library, and Roger Crockett have donated a conservation easement protecting their forestland off Back Road in Hebron.

The property is known historically as the Sturdivant Homestead, Dassler said. The land was used primarily for farming prior to 1900.

Dassler said the 1850s Greek Revival home on the land is not included in the easement. The protected property’s western edge is defined by a stonewall, which remains the town line between Hebron and Paris. The northern boundary also extends to the Paris line, and the southern boundary is marked by a stonewall that was the Hebron/Paris town line before 1817, she said.

“Ann Siekman and Roger Crockett have owned the land since 2007,” she said. The easement was recorded in December 2011.

“One of the joys of managing the woodlands on site was the surprise of discovering mature American Chestnuts in the forest and observing their bloom amongst the tall canopy last spring,” Dassler said in a statement.

The American Chestnut, which is considered an iconic tree, once comprised as much as 25 percent of the Northeastern forest until the species was decimated by a blight beginning in 1904, according to information from the Viles Arboretum in Augusta.

In the 1990s the arboretum planted about 80 chestnut trees from species across Maine that can be viewed in the arboretum on Hospital Street in Augusta. New chestnut seedlings have been planted in the past few years.

Dassler said the Maine Chestnut Foundation has recorded several other chestnut trees in the vicinity that may show evidence of a blight resistance in the locale.

Eric Evans, breeding coordinator and vice president of the Maine Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, said Monday that the chestnut trees on the Hebron property were two of the first recorded in the chestnut tree registry that the foundation has kept since 1998.

While there are no records of chestnut trees in Lewiston or Auburn, there appears to be a large number in Oxford County towns such as Fryeburg, Denmark, Porter, Hiram, Paris,  Waterford, Lovell, Bethel and Dixfield.

Evans said two chestnut trees on a Hiram property were discovered by the late Bob Lindgren of Jay and reported to the Foundation in September 2000. They were reported to have been planted by the father of the previous land owner, Charles Tobey, sometime after a blight wiped out the chestnut trees in the area in the 1920s and 1930s. One or both trees were some 50 feet high and productive, Evans said.

Evans is involved in a nationwide program designed to restore the American Chestnut tree that is resistant to blight through a breeding program with the blight-resistant Chinese Chestnut trees. The American Chestnut Foundation based in Virginia has about a dozen other sites throughout the United States involved in the effort. Evans said they are using about 40 trees that have been found in Maine, including one on the Hebron property, to introduce blight-resistant genes in hopes of developing a chestnut tree resistant to blight.

Preparing to celebrate its 25th year this summer, the Trust owns seven parcels totaling 1,608 acres, and holds 28 conservation easements protecting an additional 3,556 acres.

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