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:
“Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to the body. As she feeds my imagination, she will feed my body; for what she says she means, and is ready to do. She is not simply beautiful to the poet’s eye. Not only the rainbow and sunset are beautiful, but to be fed and clothed, sheltered and warmed aright, are equally beautiful and inspiring. There is not necessarily any gross and ugly fact which may not be eradicated from the life of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)