The Babcock Nature Preserve is located in Eden, Vermont. The preserve comprises a 1,000-acre (1.4 km²) tract of boreal forest land owned and maintained by Johnson State College and the Vermont State Colleges for scientific and educational study.
The preserve is named for Robert and Anne Hanchett Babcock who donated the tract to the Vermont State Colleges. Robert Babcock was the first provost of the Vermont State Colleges, a member of the Vermont House of Representatives, and a lieutenant governor of Vermont serving under Governor Robert Stafford.
The landscape is dominated by three large ponds and a large, environmentally significant bog, providing a natural laboratory for field biology, ornithology and environmental science courses. A summer field program features a number of such courses designed to provide field experience in the environmental and natural sciences.
Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or preserve:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)