Help keep us ready to act! Donate to our Land Action Fund today.
It’s a familiar story. A key parcel of open space land with important conservation values comes on the market unexpectedly. There’s an opportunity to protect it, but time is short. The Forest Society must act quickly and find the money to buy the land or it could be lost forever.
Today, when an important property with outstanding wildlife, forest, agricultural, recreational or scenic attributes is threatened, the Forest Society has an important tool to help secure its future: The Land Action Fund.
Established more than 10 years ago, the Fund was created through generous gifts from dedicated conservationists and Forest Society members. It’s a special fund that can only be used to help buy land or conservation easements, and can be put to use quickly on any land protection project approved by our Board of Trustees.
Over the past decade, thanks to the Land Action Fund, the Forest Society has protected dozens of critically important water resources, wildlife habitat, and working forests in all corners of the state. We use the Fund to purchase land that will be protected permanently as a Forest Society Reservation, to acquire land that we later transfer to public ownership, or to fill in a funding gap making it possible for us to complete an important conservation project.
For example, we recently acquired a 50-acre forest abutting the Nash Stream State Forest by borrowing the funds to buy the land from the Land Action Fund, and will repay the Fund once the state is able to appropriate the purchase price in order to add it to the State Forest.
In 2007, the Lamprey River Advisory Committee and Southeast NH Land Trust sought to conserve 73 remarkable acres of river frontage abutting the Forest Society’s Lamprey River Forest. The Lamprey is one of New Hampshire’s only two nationally designated "Wild and Scenic" Rivers. The Land Action Fund enabled the Forest Society to fill a funding gap, and today this land has become a significant addition to the existing Lamprey River Forest.
In Hebron, the new Town Forest abutting the Forest Society’s Cockermouth Forest has been protected, in large part with funds from the Land Action Fund. The town owns the land and the Forest Society purchased a conservation easement on the 450-acre parcel.
We need your help to assure that the Forest Society can continue to respond in time to land conservation emergencies. Please make a donation to the Land Action Fund today. Your gift will go directly to buying land and conservation easements and helping to pay the often substantial transaction costs for these projects.
With your help, the Forest Society will be ready when that call or email arrives that says “Help! A critical parcel of land is on the auction block!” 
The ‘wise use’ of New Hampshire’s natural resources has been a key tenet of the Forest Society’s mission for more than a century. Through our educational programs, we seek to demonstrate how we wisely use the forest resources that are entrusted to us—and this includes the sweet New Hampshire tradition of sugaring the maples.
The Forest Society’s annual maple programs at The Rocks in Bethlehem—site of our 1,400-acre North Country Conservation and Education Center—have grown each March, drawing hundreds of visitors to The Rocks to learn the history, science and art of making maple syrup. Each class of children and adults enjoys tapping their own tree and tasting the final result of boiling sap into syrup. Today, our maple program needs a better facility for serving these larger groups.
In good New Hampshire fashion, we hope to marry the wise management of our maples with the wise re-use of one of the most unique historic buildings remaining at The Rocks, the “the Sawmill / Pigpen.” Designed in 1906 by Hermann von Holst, the Sawmill/Pigpen building is adjacent to a stand of sugar maples, providing easy access for demonstrating the maple tree tapping and sap collecting process.
We need your help to restore, adapt and re-use the historic Sawmill / Pigpen as the new Sugar House and Maple Education Center. The cost of the project is $98,600, and the first $19,000 has already been raised. In order for the new facility to be complete in time for sugaring next spring, we need to raise the funds by September 15th.
Please make your gift today to help us save a piece of New Hampshire’s farming history, and to keep a legacy of conservation and ‘wise use’ alive!
The Forest Society is working to purchase a conservation easement on more than 900 acres on the northern slopes of Ragged Mountain, immediately adjacent to the Ragged Mountain Ski Area. To complete the project, we must raise $40,000 from private donors and we need your help today.
If you ski, fish, hike, appreciate wildlife, love our glorious fall colors, or simply live in the area, the March Pond Forest is much more than a beautiful view – it’s a very important place for the wonderful quality of the life we enjoy in this region.
March Pond Forest sits amid a 10,000-acre landscape of large unbroken woodlands – a high-priority area for regional conservation plans. In addition to its scenic beauty, there are a remote pond and pristine headwater streams that flow into Gulf Bog in Danbury, and later feed into the Smith River. Conserving these small coldwater streams is vital for protecting water quality, as well as critical spawning habitat for native fish species including salmon.
Located in the southwest corner of Hill, along the boundaries with Danbury and Andover, March Pond Forest connects with more than 750 acres of protected land in the Town of Andover that reaches all the way to Highland Lake, creating a block of 1,650 forested acres that will remain permanently protected for recreation and wildlife habitat.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has already awarded the Forest Society a substantial grant to support this conservation easement, and the landowner has agreed to sell the easement to the Forest Society at a discounted price. Now, we are seeking to raise the final $40,000 needed by October 15, 2008.
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