The lakeside town is home to a unique pocket of wildlife, including rattlesnakes and the five-lined skink.
People are welcome at the nature preserve, but only in canoes or on foot.
But West Haven takes it one step further. The westernmost town in Rutland County is home to the Southern Lake Champlain Valley office of the Nature Conservancy and its Helen Buckner Memorial Preserve. The preserve encompasses about 7,500 acres in West Haven - most of the acreage located on the peninsular western edge of town. And on this land are some of Vermont's most unique species of wildlife and plants - things that are not found elsewhere in the state but survive here in a warm pocket that sits in a convergence of three different geological regions. There is the state's largest colony of timber rattlesnakes and Vermont's only lizard, the five-lined skink.