BRIDGTON — Schools and libraries in the towns of Bridgton, Casco, Denmark, Harrison, Naples, Sebago and Raymond have the opportunity to receive small grants from Loon Echo Land Trust for environmental education programs. Applications are to be downloaded from Loon Echo’s website at www.LELT.org, under the Programs tab, and returned by Jan. 15.

Funds for the educational grants are made available through Loon Echo’s Educational Endowment, and since 1998 hundreds of children have benefited from programs that teach about the natural world. The endowment was developed as a memorial to two teachers, Helen Allen and Polly Bartlett. Allen granted Loon Echo a conservation easement to forever protect her beautiful hilltop farm on Quaker Ridge in Casco. After her death at the age of 94, Allen’s bequest to Loon Echo allowed the trust to create a fund to support yearly programs in local schools and libraries.

Bartlett was one of the original board members of Loon Echo. Each year she treated her third grade students at Sebago Elementary School to a winter walk with Maine Audubon. When she died in 2000 at the age of 48, the trust created a fund in her memory to ensure that third graders at Sebago Elementary would always take their winter walk.

Past recipients have included Bridgton, Casco and Raymond public libraries, as well as Lake Region High School and Sebago and Harrison elementary schools.

The group hopes to once again offer a Mayberry Hill Forest Field Day at Loon Echo’s 160-acre Mayberry Hill Preserve in Casco, where students learn about forestry, tree types, wildlife and much more as a way to gain an understanding of local forests, their complex nature and importance to the region. The field day is sponsored by Loon Echo, the Maine Forest Service and Maine Project Learning Tree. This special field day opportunity does not accept grant funding applications; instead Loon Echo works with a carefully selected middle or high school class that’s highly engaged in outdoor and forest studies.

Contact Loon Echo at 207-647-4352 or info@lelt.org with questions about the grant program or their land protection efforts.