Tim Sprinkle

AMC’s 2006 conservation outlook

AMC Outdoors
March 2006

Located near the town of Bethel in southwestern Maine, Grafton Notch State Park has long been a favorite destination for hikers, sightseers, and birdwatchers. Its 3,112 acres provide access to Old Speck Mountain – one of the highest peaks in the state – the Appalachian Trail, and the new Grafton Notch Loop Trail, making the park one of the most popular recreation sites in the region.

But the area also has a problem: a 3,600-acre chunk of unprotected land located right next to the park, surrounded on three sides by public land. It's a "doughnut-hole" parcel that conservation groups have for years tried to add to the park; a gap that, if all goes according to plan, will be filled in later this year.

In the northeast, springtime is all about late-season skiing, whitewater paddling, and weekends on the trail. But in Washington DC, the months of March and April are the peak lobbying season for organizations like AMC that are hoping to get their projects into the draft federal budget. It’s a challenging and time consuming process, but this funding is an essential resource and now is the time for conservation leaders to make their cases to the federal government.

“We’re in this extraordinary moment in time in terms of land conservation,” says Julie Wormser, AMC’s director of advocacy. “We’ve been able to protect over three million acres of land just since the late 90s, just in the northern forests. It’s about living conservation, and it’s just plain old people like you and me who’ve been doing this."

Grafton Notch
"There is a direct link between the health of this landscape and the health of the community," says project manager Sam Hodder with the Trust for Public Lands, the national land conservation organization that has spearheaded the Grafton Notch purchase.

"The New England region as a whole has grown to love the recreation opportunities in Grafton and the Mahoosucs and this is an opportunity to make sure that those recreation assets, those outdoors assets, will be there for generations to come."

Steve Wight, a community leader from the area who's worked on a variety of local conservation issues, agrees.

"Since the Bethel area is focused on outdoor recreation along with its hospitality industry, I think it's essential that we're able to protect these kinds of properties," he says. "It's considered not only an environmental issue but an economic issue here because we depend on large areas of forest land in order to enable the kind of wildlife and plant diversity that people expect when they come here."

The Trust for Public Lands and its partners have requested $2 million from the federal Forest Legacy Program to purchase the Grafton Notch parcel. It's the top-ranked project in the state of Maine for 2006 – meaning that it will get funding preference over the state's other conservation projects this year – and will be turned over to the Maine Department of Conservation for inclusion in Grafton Notch State Park once the purchase is complete.

The USDA’s Forest Legacy Program was designed to protect private forests by converting them to “non-forest” uses, whether it’s for watershed protection, wildlife habitats, or simply for recreation. The funding goes to support the sale of conservation easements – legally binding arrangements that protect a property while leaving it in private hands – although, in practice, that’s just the beginning, since Congress doesn’t always approve the requests, leaving organizers scrambling to make up the difference. Needless to say, it’s a complicated process.

"We've been working for I think 11 years to do this Grafton Loop Trail," AMC’s Wormser says, "which has been an extension of our mission to protect great places and help people be good stewards of them."

Phillips Brook
When most people think of industrial forests, images of clear-cut, ecological destruction often come to mind. But that's not the case at the Phillips Brook property, a sprawling, 23,000-acre tract in northern New Hampshire that was managed for more than a century by International Paper. In fact, the land, which was sold to GMO Renewable Resources in 2004 and will be preserved under a conservation easement this year, is in surprisingly good shape, with two undeveloped ponds, a snowmobile trail, and miles of backcountry just waiting to be explored.

"From a wildlife perspective, [the New Hampshire Department of] Fish and Game is very excited about the project because it's a major swath of forest land and it has good habitats for a wide range of species that we hope to keep habitat for in the North Country, like moose, bear, and fish," says Paul Doscher, vice president of land conservation with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, which is managing the easement transfer.

In terms of recreation, Phillips Brook is a rare find. Although GMO will continue to work part of the property, the easement will protect the backcountry areas and, Doscher hopes, restore the yurt system that once served cross country skiers on the property.

"The idea is to provide greater opportunities for people to get out into the backcountry, stay the night, and enjoy the place," he says.

Willard Pond
The land conservation community and AMC have been working to protect the area around dePierrefeu-Willard Pond Wildlife Sanctuary for the better part of a decade, most recently adding 364 acres on nearby Bald Mountain to the Audubon Society of New Hampshire's holdings. It's easy to see why, too, since the sanctuary encompasses some of the most ecologically diverse land in the northeast, with bald eagles, ospreys, and a variety of forest and wetland areas.

“We protect the common loon, which is a threatened species in New Hampshire, and a lot of upland forest,” says Andrew Robinson, NH Audubon's land protection specialist. “It’s just a great spot for wildlife in general.”

In 2006, the organization hopes to expand further by purchasing a tract of land in the adjacent Robb Reservoir corridor. They have enlisted the help of the Trust for Public Lands, the Harris Center, and a local logging firm to raise the money, using a combination of state, federal, and private funding for the $2.5 million purchase.

"It'll form a 10,000-acre continuous block of land, which is pretty much unheard of in southern New Hampshire," explains NH Audubon's sanctuaries manager, Phil Brown. "It's one of the only areas outside of the Whites that's that large."

And there will be plenty to do in all of that open space. Hiking, fishing, hunting, and boating are popular activities at Willard Pond, not to mention the wildlife viewing and education opportunities in the area.

Meade Cadot, director of the Harris Center, an environmental education center and land trust based in Hancock, calls the land conservation efforts in the area "tremendously important."

"From a wildlife perspective, Bald Mountain is pretty well known as a favorite haunt for bobcats," he says, "it's one of the best places to see their tracks in the wintertime. And as for the hiking world, I think it's got one of the most scenic trails in all of the Monadnock region, the Tamposi Trail. It's an amazing hike with very scenic ledge stops along the way."

For AMC, efforts like these are a good thing, and proof that the organization’s leadership in the region is paying off. From longtime club projects like the Grafton Loop Trail to independent efforts in the Phillips Brook area, land conservation in the northeast benefits everyone, making all the paperwork, the political wrangling, and the legwork that’s involved worth it in the end