PORTSMOUTH -- Thanks to the philanthropy of a van Buren heiress, the Aquidneck Island Land Trust has secured the right to purchase a perpetual conservation easement for close to 125 acres of woods and farmland on Wapping Road, near the Middletown line.

Barbara van Buren, great-granddaughter of the inventor of Campbell's condensed soups, has agreed, for $70,000, to give the trust two years to raise $3 million for the easement. She is the principal of a company that snatched the land away from prospective developers for $8 million last year, with the intent of reaching an agreement with the trust.

"It's a major contribution," said Ted Clemente, executive director of the trust, which announced the deal Friday. "Without that kind partnership, we truly would not be at the table."

If the trust is successful at raising the $3 million and exercising its option, farming can continue and wildlife habitats will be conserved, said Clemente. The parcel features swamp, pond and field habitats and the largest unfragmented forest on Aquidneck Island. It is home to such birds as the northern harrier, dark-eyed junco and blue-winged teal.

As developers were seeking to acquire the property last year, the trust sought to determine what might happen.

"We had engineers look at this property. They showed it could have been a 40-lot subdivision," Clemente said. "Last year, we lost 230 acres [on the island] to development. The pressure is very real."

The 125-acre site is located on the eastern side of Wapping Road, just north of Old Mill Lane, and was formerly owned by the Derektor family. In the 1980s, the state began a protracted effort to force the owners to clean up soil contaminated with PCBs from dumped transformers.

Clemente said the area where Robert Derektor dumped transformers from his Middletown shipyard is about 2,500 square feet and has since been capped and cleaned up. Nevertheless, he said, this area is not part of the 125 acres included in the conservation easement.

In April, van Buren helped the trust protect another large farm off Wapping Road. Her company sold the trust a conservation agreement for the 128-acre Vaucluse Farm for $150,000.

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