Forest Society facilitates federal grant process
CONCORD – May 22, 2015 -- The N.H. Department of Resources and Economic Development - Division of Forests and Lands has acquired a conservation easement on 3,200 acres of working forests owned by Green Acre Woodlands, Inc. The easement culminates the Cardigan Highlands Forest Legacy Project, a nine-year, federally funded effort that has conserved three tracts of land in Hebron, Groton, Plymouth, Rumney and Dorchester totaling 5,100 acres north of Newfound Lake. These lands will remain open to the public for hiking, hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other traditional recreational uses.
The easement protects the land from commercial development while allowing the landowner, Green Acre Woodlands, to continue to own and manage the forests for sustainable timber production. The easement also permanently conserves two State snowmobile trail corridors that cross the properties. Green Acre Woodlands has previously conveyed conservation easements on other lands in Plymouth and Stewartstown.
The N.H. Division of Forests and Lands has administered about $31 million in Forest Legacy grant funds since the program’s creation in 1990, using the grants to protect more than 215,000 forested acres from conversion to other uses.
“As with all Forest Legacy projects, the Cardigan Highlands Project is focused on maintaining working forests so we can maintain the economic benefit of our forest products industry while also ensuring recreational access to these large tracts of land,” said Susan Francher, the N.H. Div. of Forests and Lands forester who coordinates the Forest Legacy program in New Hampshire.
The Cardigan Highlands Project lands are located within one of the state's largest relatively unfragmented blocks of forestland south of the White Mountain National Forest, said Brian Hotz, vice president of land protection for the Forest Society. “This project will protect important habitat for wildlife species that require large interior forest areas. It will also conserve thousands of feet of stream frontage and important riparian habitat in the Newfound Lake and Baker River watersheds,” Hotz said.
Francher said that the Forest Legacy Program requires that a forest stewardship plan be developed and maintained over time. “That plan will be reviewed by this agency (Division of Forests and Lands), in partnership with the owners. We take a proactive approach to make sure the purposes of the easement are upheld over time, and that the economic and noneconomic benefits we’ve come to appreciate and require as part of our forested landscape will continue,” she said.
Tom Hahn, a forester with FORECO LLC, the company that manages the land for owners Green Acre Woodlands, said the Forest Legacy project ensures the ability of Green Acre Woodlands to own and manage the forests for the long-term.
“The income derived from the sale of the easements allows landowners to not be 100 percent dependent on timber harvest revenue to generate income from the land,” Hahn said.
Green Acre Woodlands has also chosen to use the easement funds to purchase more land, thus increasing the amount of land that will be maintained as traditional working forests, Hahn said.
Bob Berti, a forester and the owner of FORECO LLC, said that this easement continues the long tradition of support and practice of responsible forest management by the Green Acre Woodlands family that began with their first land acquisitions in 1946.