In September of 2024, the Northeast Wilderness Trust asked the Reel Quest team to spend three days creating video and photo assets for an expansive conservation project in the northwestern corner of Maine: The Magalloway River Headwaters. This 78,000 acre property includes all of the lands around Parmachenee and Aziscohos Lakes and the streams that flow into them, where some of the best remaining brook trout habitat in the state can be found. The property also includes high elevation habitats on Rump Mountain and other peaks, which means the area supports all of the big fauna Maine is known for as well as an amazing diversity of bird species, from the endangered Bicknell’s Thrush to falcons and eagles.
The effort to conserve this property (currently in private ownership) is a collaborative effort between the Northeast Wilderness Trust, the Nature Conservancy, the Forest Society of Maine, and Rangeley Lakes Conservation Trust. Located between other conservation lands, protecting this property will create 500,000 acres of contiguous conservation land. It will be a mix of working forest (where sustainable forestry will continue), protected recreation access for hiking, fishing, snowmobiling, and paddling, and a core 11000+ care wilderness preserve. The Magalloway Collaborative needs to raise $62 Million to make complete this conservation effort. You can learn more about the property and the conservation effort at https://magalloway.org/.
As part of the communications efforts for this project, we created the above video portrait of the Magalloway Headwaters in both the 4K horizontal version above, as well as a vertical format for social media reels. We also created an archive of stills that the collaborative is using for their marketing materials as well as for print and on-line news media (you can see a sample of the photos on Jerry’s EcoPhotography website: https://ecophotography.com/photo-assignment-conserving-the-amazing-magalloway-river-headwaters-78000-acres/). Like many of our projects, this was all shot via canoe, drone, and Jeep.
Jeep and canoe in Magalloway Headwaters.
Canoeing in the morning fog on Aziscohos Lake in Maine’s Northern Forest.
We’ve been creating content for the Northeast Wilderness Trust for several years now. You can see some previous videos that we’ve made in this project post: https://reelquestfilms.com/project/2023-wilderness-preserve-trilogy/.