The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management announced an “unusually large” land purchase this week, saying the state had acquired 942 acres of former Boy Scout property in Burrillville.

The bulk of the $1.6 million purchase price came from a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service grant, according to a statement from DEM.

ecoRI News originally reported on the purchase and sale agreement for the property last year.

The property will become a part of the Buck Hill Management Area and will be open to the public for recreation and hunting, with the expectation of 140 acres off Buck Hill Road, which will be closed temporarily for improvements.

“Conserving such a large parcel of connected forestland is a huge win for preserving Rhode Island’s natural resources and increasing public access to the outdoors,” DEM director Terry Gray said in the statement. The land purchase is the single largest for the department since 2014.

The property was previously owned by the Narragansett Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which includes troops in Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts. The Scouts kept about 200 acres on the property to use as a weekend camp, according to DEM.

The Boy Scouts had initially proposed selling the land to glamping company Getaway, but the deal fell through in April 2023.

Located between several state parks in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, the land was a prime target of conservation groups who feared the land could fall into the hands of developers after the national Scout organization settled a national sexual abuse case and filed for bankruptcy.

Paul Roselli, president of the Burrillville Land Trust, spoke up against the sale of the land to a private company for development, and said he was relieved that it would now be protected in perpetuity.

“What’s really neat about this, and I hate to say it this way, but so often, a lot of this money ends up in South County, and to have something like this happen in Providence County, in the northwest corner of Rhode Island, is even more special,” Roselli said.

Roselli explained that the land falls within the Southern New England Heritage Forest, also known as the “last green valley” — a contiguous stretch of land largely unmarred by human development.

“The big tracks of land are still there,” he said. “It really recalls the area before the white settlers came over from Europe.”

During a hike earlier this year, an ecoRI News reporter traversed 18 miles of this forest, including some of the former Boy Scout land, and didn’t encounter a single person outside of the hiking party.

“We have land up here. We have land that can feed a population in the entire state, can excite people when they walk through the woods, can provide hunting and fishing and recreation opportunities for all the folks in the region,” Roselli said.

The purchase of the Boy Scouts’ property also coincides with DEM’s intent to buy another 150 acres at Sweet’s Hill in Burrillville, something Roselli and the land trust have been pushing for years.

“These places are the lungs and the heart of all of Rhode Island,” Roselli said.