How Members Stepped Up to Protect their Neighborhood Forest in Stoddard

It was always a pleasure for June and Bill Congdon to see the scenic woods along their road in Stoddard. Seeing “For Sale” signs suddenly appear there among the hemlock trees was another story.

            Would the forest along that stretch of Shedd Hill Road disappear, and more buildings pop up in its place? What would that mean for Highland Lake, downhill from the land? When that topic came up at a birthday party the couple attended in town, they heard an intriguing idea.

            “ ‘It’s too bad that doesn’t become part of the Peirce Reservation…,” someone mused, meaning the Forest Society’s Peirce Wildlife and Forest Reservation that connects to the property that was for sale.

            “June and I went home and said, ‘You know something, that might be a good thing for us to do,’ ” said Bill Congdon at the couple’s home recently.

            The couple, longtime Forest Society members who retired to their Highland Lake vacation home in 2001, acted on the idea. They gave a targeted donation enabling the Forest Society to buy the 28-acre property that was for sale and add it to the Peirce Reservation. The reservation is now 3,604-acres strong – one of the biggest tracts of land under Forest Society ownership (second only to the Mount Monadnock Reservation).

            The forested addition is not only viewed from Shedd Hill Road, but also from Highland Lake. That it features high-quality wildlife habitat is well known by the Congdons and neighbors who often spot tracks of deer and other wildlife during regular walks along the road.

            Geoffrey Jones, the chair of the Stoddard Conservation Commission, said the Congdons’ action is important for the town. 

            “Shedd Hill Road has been hammered with development for the last 20 to 30 years,” he said, adding that it’s zoned residential and the 28-acre tract likely would not have remained a forest for much longer had it not been protected.  

            The Congdons join an effective group of other conservation-minded landowners in the town of Stoddard, which has the distinction of being 66 percent conserved. Enabling the 28-acre parcel on Shedd Hill Road to be added to the Peirce Reservation made sense at this time of their lives, June Congdon said. “It was an opportunity,” she said, to give back to the community they love being a part of by preserving the scenic, woodsy character of their corner of it.

            Those “For Sale” signs are gone for good.