State completes 5,100-acre conservation easement north of Newfound Lake

CONCORD — 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 Cardigan Highlands Forest Legacy Project utilized a grant from the Forest Legacy Program, a federal program implemented by the U.S. Forest Service to help protect environmentally important private forestlands threatened with conversion to non-forest uses. With assistance from the Society for the Protection of NH Forests (Forest Society), which sponsored the project and helped secure the $3.8 million Forest Legacy Program grant, the NH Division of Forests and Lands completed the last phase of the project in April by purchasing a conservation easement on land in Hebron, Groton and Plymouth. The first phase of the project was completed in February of 2012.

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.