A women-led grassroots effort to preserve one of Maine’s most iconic landscapes is gaining momentum in Searsport, where the Wild Blueberry Collective has taken steps toward purchasing 158 acres of blueberry barrens with the goal of returning the land to the community.
Formed out of friendship and a shared sense of purpose, the Wild Blueberry Collective began in 2021 when Gloria Pearse and Crystal Vaccaro realized they were not alone in their desire to “do something good for the world.”
What followed was the assembling of a small but determined group of eight women, many with professional backgrounds in fields ranging from horticulture to education, united by a commitment to land stewardship, community access and cultural preservation.
The group has since evolved into a nonprofit organization focused on protecting wild blueberry barrens, a landscape that is rapidly disappearing across Maine. Once spanning roughly 150,000 acres statewide, fewer than 50,000 acres remain today, increasingly threatened by development. For the Collective, the stakes extend beyond conservation alone.
“This is such a huge part of summers in Maine,” Pearse said, reflecting on her personal connection to the barrens. “When you consider the Wabanaki Confederacy, it goes back thousands of years and it’s dwindling. A huge part of this is to preserve something so unique, so precious, and we want to share that with the community.”
The land in question sits in western Searsport along the Belfast city line. It is being sold by Wyman’s Blueberries, which has been shedding some of its smaller wild blueberry tracts. When Pearse learned the company intended to sell the parcel, what began as a fleeting moment of excitement quickly turned into a daunting challenge.
“I don’t have money for that,” Pearse recalled thinking at the time. “No one in our (Collective) has money for that.”
What the group lacked in capital, however, it made up for in resolve. Within weeks, the Collective mobilized, launching a nonprofit application, initiating grant writing efforts, and beginning a grassroots fundraising campaign. In February, those efforts culminated in a purchase and sale agreement with Wyman’s for $750,000.
“Gloria is doing great work with the grants,” Vaccaro said. “We’re also doing fundraisers and raising awareness about the urgency of purchasing these barrens. Hopefully, through that, we can find someone interested in assisting this cause.”
The Collective does not intend to privatize or restrict access to the land. Instead, its members envision the barrens as an open, shared space, one that reflects both Maine’s cultural heritage and a renewed commitment to community access.
“When we first talked about the land, we agreed it should be a community space for all,” Vaccaro said.
Plans for the property include the creation of public trails for walking, hunting, and cross-country skiing, as well as organized community harvests, educational programming, and workshops focused on sustainable practices. Vaccaro, who previously served as a teen librarian at the Belfast Free Library, said she hopes the land will become a hub for learning and connection.
“We’d like to do things like forage walks, classes on healing and sustaining, things that help bring the community together,” she said.
The Collective also plans to harvest blueberries from the land as a way to help sustain the project financially, creating a model that blends conservation with practical, community-based use.
Underlying the initiative is a broader philosophy that echoes similar land-based movements across Maine, from land trusts to more ambitious ones, like Niweskok, a tribal “land back” project that focuses on reconnecting communities with land, food systems and indigenous cultural traditions. These efforts reflect a growing recognition that land stewardship is not only about preservation, but about restoring relationships between people and place.
For the Wild Blueberry Collective, that vision is grounded in both urgency and hope.
Development pressures continue to reshape midcoast Maine, often at the expense of traditional working landscapes. The group’s recent support of Northport residents opposing a proposed RV park on former blueberry land underscores its broader concern about the loss of these spaces.
“We’re thinking ahead and being proactive,” Vaccaro said. “Saving land from development, especially land that has been cultivated for thousands of years for one food source that grows in Maine — why would we want to get rid of that?”
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.
