The Egler Preserve

In 1926 the Egler family first came to Norfolk, Connecticut from Brooklyn, New York, and purchased the Stenman Farm and around 200 acres. The existing Finnish barn was remodeled as a summer home and later turned into a year-round home with an interior in the style of a Brooklyn brownstone. Frank began the first of “Naturalization studies” at the age of 16 when he transplanted a Pink Phlox onto the property. Studies were continued over the years with over 2000 separate plantings of over 600 introduced taxa have been set out into the established plant communities of Aton Forest (AF). The family acquired additional abutting acreage over time, mostly farm fields and some woods and allowed the forest to take over most of the fields. Aton Forest North Egler Preserve Map.
 
In 1945, Frank retired from teaching and moved to Norfolk full-time. He began to envision AF as a small, volunteer, long-term scientific research station. The first AF publications were annual reports on experiments appearing in 1947 in the Journals of Forestry and Ecology, and The Botanical Gazette from 1947-1952. During this time Frank became a leading authority on the effects of herbicides, ecologically sound vegetation management of rights-of-way. In due course he published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles on the subject, and another 300 articles on related subjects in science and ecology.
 
Aton Forest was initially formed in 1962 as a field station of 650 acres, when it began to publish annual communications and an annotated bibliography of Frank Egler’s monographs. It was relaunched as a non-profit in 1990. There is a self-guided Interpretive Trail opposite the Headquarters at 270 North Colebrook Road. Aton Forest North Egler Preserve Self guided Trail Map
 
In the early 1960s Dr. Egler was active in the creation of another approximately natural area preserve in the south of Norfolk, the Spaulding Pond Preserve (see link), with Happy Kitchel of Greenwich, Connecticut, who would later become his wife in 1968. Happy Kitchel died of cancer in 1978.  Frank refers to his decade with Happy as the happiest years of his life. For half the year they lived in North Norfolk and for the other half in South Norfolk.

AF now stewards 2,459 acres, in Semi-Managed and Wildlands type conserved lands in the near bioregion. It currently owns 1,463 acres in total, of which 1,157 are under conservation easement. It holds conservation easements over 997 acres, the bulk of which are in the Spaulding Pond Preserve, which AF is currently seeking to acquire fee ownership of, in partnership with an appropriate partner as holder of an amended and restated conservation easement.
 
Aton Forest, Inc. was granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status in 1990 to help protect the lands of Aton Forest in perpetuity and to carry out Frank Egler’s desired “long-term, low-cost, low-impact” research of forest succession. AF is registered as a biological field station and owns five houses in North Norfolk. The closely related Aton Forest Fellowship, a scientific research fellowship, was established in 1981 and currently supports one fellow studying leafminers and insects. Other research activities are supported by the 501c3.