Conserving Land and Water Through The Forest Legacy Program

Content submitted by: Nashua, Squannacook, and Nissitissit Rivers Wild and Scenic Stewardship Council

The Nashua, Squannacook, and Nissitissit Rivers Wild and Scenic Stewardship Council (Stewardship Council) has led an ambitious effort to protect significant forest areas from development and fragmentation in the Nashua River watershed. The Nashua, Squannacook, and Nissitissit, along with their headwaters, flow through an area of southern New Hampshire and north-central Massachusetts that is under substantial development pressure. One of the best ways to ensure the rivers and their outstanding resources are protected is to conserve the land around them.

The Boston skyline seen from the top of Jewell Hill in Ashburnham, MA, looking across the forested landscape of the Nashua River watershed

Ted Hoosick

Administered nationally by the US Forest Service (USFS) and statewide in Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Forest Legacy Program (FLP) uses both fee-simple land purchases and permanent conservation easements to protect environmentally important forest areas that are threatened by conversion to non-forest uses. Partnering with local and regional land trusts, conservation commissions, state agencies, and other organizations, the Stewardship Council set out with the goal of working with willing landowners to commit 1000+-acres of threatened, and strategically located forested land for protection. By the time the application was submitted for federal review in October 2021, the project involved over 2,400 acres with 25 tracts (22 property owners) in ten municipalities (seven of which are our NSN W&SR towns).

The Wild and Scenic designation serves as the central theme to the Stewardship Council’s FLP application: the FLP’s additional layer of conservation will help protect outstanding scenic, cultural, fish, wildlife, ecological, and recreational resources around the rivers and their tributaries. If awarded, this application will protect 5.5 miles of “greenway”. The Stewardship Council and its many partners continue to communicate with prospective landowners and are considering a Phase II FLP application next year. This FLP submission was bolstered by 45 supporters; such a collaboration along with unprecedented landowner outreach is building a strong partner network in the watershed and planting the seeds for future land protection opportunities.

River Currents

This article was featured in the 2022 edition of River Currents, the annual newsletter for the National Park Service Wild & Scenic Rivers Program.