Photos of MMRG’s 2019 7 Town Mixer by V. Long.

MMRG’s 7^th annual ‘Seven Town Mixer’ featured guest speakers Barbara Richter, Executive Director of NH Association of Conservation Commissions, and Charlie Bridges, Chair of the Birch Ridge Community Forest Steering Committee. The focus on town forests and community forests attracted an attentive crowd of a dozen Conservation Commissioners and another dozen interested members of the public and MMRG staff.

Richter educated the audience about Town Forests, which are authorized by New Hampshire law, established by town vote and managed by a Town Forest Committee of citizens appointed by the town’s Select Board. Using a quiz to test audience knowledge, she pointed out that town forests are not the same as conservation property, although many NH towns choose to add a conservation easement to ensure the town forest will never get developed. Another important point was that timber harvest income from a town forest must go towards management of the forest, unless a different use is approved by town vote.

Richter also presented results of a recent ‘Town Forest Inventory’ conducted by the Northern Forest Center and UNH Cooperative Extension. The Inventory found that New Hampshire communities generate about $146 million a year in economic benefits from approximately 180,000 acres of community-owned undeveloped forests, fields and wetlands. Such benefits include forestry products, increasing tourism and recreational opportunities, water quality protection and other so-called ecosystem services where nature does the work to improve the quality of life for people.

Charlie Bridges spoke about Community Forests, which are made possible with financial assistance from the Community Forest Program of the US Forest Service. He gave examples of several small NH towns that have established their own community forests through that federal grant program with additional help from non-profits such as the Trust for Public Land, the Open Space Institute, and the Northern Forest Center. One such town, Errol, population three hundred, acquired the 7,000+-acre ‘13 Mile Woods Community Forest’ and used several years of timber sale proceeds to pay off the loan it had taken out to purchase the land.

Bridges concluded with a detailed description how the 2,000-acre Birch Ridge Community Forest was successfully conserved by a partnership of Southeast Land Trust (SELT), Merrymeeting Lake Association (MMLA) and MMRG, thanks to grants from the Community Forest Program, NH Land and Community Heritage Program (LCHIP), NH DES Aquatic Resources Mitigation (ARM) Program, the Town of New Durham, and a multitude of generous individual donors. Within the partnership, MMLA instigated the conservation effort, SELT is the landowner, and MMRG holds the conservation easement on the property. The property is open to the public, with the best access being along State Snowmobile Corridor 22, thanks to extensive trail maintenance work by Powder Mill Snowmobile Club.

New Durham residents Bill Malay, who serves on the town Conservation Commission, and Mike Gelinas, a Trail Manager for Powder Mill Snowmobile Club, were both glad to have attended the Mixer and learn something new about the publicly accessible forests of New Durham.  Malay, who frequently gets questions about the new Birch Ridge Community Forest, summarized afterwards, “This clarified a good deal!”