Harris Center for Conservation Education

Thirty years ago a New Hampshire development boom was reaching a fever pitch; the last farm in Nashua was sprouting pavement and concrete; bobcats had disappeared from Amherst and Bedford; and migratory songbirds were sending messages of double trouble -- forest destruction in the tropics and forest fragmentation in the Northeast.

What should a conservation education center do? The Harris Center chose to become a local land trust to demonstrate how neighborhoods and organizations could work together to protect clusters of undeveloped parcels and thus maximize the attributes and resources provided by open space. Clustered open space, often now called landscape scale conservation, has multiple advantages over dispersed protected areas: It can provide the contiguous blocks of habitat for far ranging species like bobcat, moose and black bear; it provides the forest interior needed by some neotropical migrant songbirds like ovenbird and black-throated blue warbler; it maintains forests on a scale large enough to manage for both timber and wildlife; it preserves the potential for back country recreation such as “wilderness” canoe camping as well as hunting plus on and off trail trekking; and it can also preserve scenic drives down country roads with scenic viewsheds that all ages can enjoy. Last but not least clustered open space can protect not only shore lands but whole watersheds for current and future well heads, reservoirs, and other vital water supply resources.

All of these attributes are illustrated by an area centered on the Harris Center known as the Supersanctuary, an aggregate of protected parcels in a hundred twenty square mile portion of the Monadnock Region central highlands and including parts of Antrim, Greenfield, Hancock, Harrisville, Nelson, Peterborough, Stoddard and Windsor. When the Harris Center coined the name in 1985, the Supersanctuary contained several nodes of protected land totaling about 3,000 acres. By protecting land abutting nodes and making connections among them the Supersanctuary has grown to nearly 30,000 acres including four 2,000 foot mountains and surrounding forest land, five lakes over 100 acres and ten smaller ponds, a thousand acres along the Contoocook River and major tributary junctions, 1,600 acres along the Contoocook’s North Branch, several scenic roads, and wetlands including flood plain, swamp, marsh, fen and wet meadow.

In the dozens of transactions, we have utilized a number of techniques including outright purchase, borrow and pay back to revolving loan fund, funding through limited development, outright gift, and bargain sale whereby the seller makes a deductible donation by accepting less than the appraised value for the land. But by far the most important tool has been the conservation easement by which the land owner retains the fee and most management rights and responsibilities but donates or sells all or most development rights to the land trust. In addition to scores of individuals or families, Supersanctuary contributors have included the New Hampshire Audubon Society, the NH Fish and Game Department, The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, The Monadnock Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, The Trust for Public Land, The New England Forestry Foundation and the towns of Hancock, Harrisville, Nelson, Peterborough and Stoddard. The philosophy for the Supersanctuary is that bigger is better, and the key is not who protects what but what gets protected. And while there are multiple goals, one major need, bear in mind, is room to roam.

Harris Center for Conservation Education, Inc.
83 King's Highway, Hancock, NH 03449
Phone 603.525.3394
Fax 603.525.3395

LAND PROTECTION

History of Land Protection