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The Nature Conservancy in Africa - Conservation in Africa

The Nature Conservancy in Asia Pacific - Conservation in Asia-Pacific

The Nature Conservancy in the Caribbean - Conservation in the Caribbean

The Nature Conservancy in Central America - Conservation in Central America

The Nature Conservancy in North America - Conservation in North America

The Nature Conservancy in the United States - Conservation in the United States

The Nature Conservancy in South America - Conservation in South America

Key Projects

Protecting the Northern Forest, the Great Bay Estuary, the Mount Washington Valley, and Southwestern New Hampshire are top priorities for the Conservancy. All four ecosystems are threatened by development.

©The Nature ConservancyThe Northern Forest, which features extensive and diverse forests and is a major wildlife corridor, provides the Conservancy with an outstanding opportunity to protect land on a landscape scale. The Chapter's most recent Northern Forest land acquisition, the Bunnell Tract, has been a top protection priority for The Nature Conservancy because of its enormous ecological significance. At 18,680 acres, the tract harbors numerous rare and endangered plants animals and natural communities. It encompasses New Hampshire's highest mountain range north of the White Mountain National Forest, features 28 miles of stream frontage, and is home to significant alpine habitat, semi-rich mesic hardwood forests, high elevation spruce-fir forests, spruce-fir flats, and an extraordinary Cranberry Bog wetland complex. These natural communities traditionally support rare and endangered wildlife such as the pine marten, lynx, and the peregrine falcon.

©The Nature ConservancyGreat Bay is New Hampshire's largest and most complex estuary system. It is comprised of a mosaic of high-quality, highly productive freshwater and tidal wetlands - thousands of acres of salt marsh, tidal creeks, eelgrass beds, mudflats, beaver flowages, emergent marshes, fens, bogs, and Atlantic white cedar swamps. The area provides important migration and wintering habitat for a diversity of bird, fish, and mammal species, offering a major stopover point for 20 species of waterfowl, 27 species of shorebirds, and 13 species of wading birds. The Great Bay Estuary also supports 66 species of rare plants, 4 rare animal species, and 12 types of rare natural communities.

©The Nature Conservancy
 
 

Located in east-central New Hampshire, 15 miles south of Conway in the heart of the Mount Washington Valley, the Ossipee Pine Barrens is a 3,000-acre example of the globally rare pitch pine/scrub oak barrens natural community. Pine Barrens are woodlands that depend on wildfires to maintain their complex mosaic of pitch pine stands, scrub oak thickets, blueberry filled openings, boreal peatlands, and sandy pondshores. The Ossipee Pine Barrens is New Hampshire's last intact pine barrens, and one of North America's finest "northern variant" pitch pine/scrub oak barrens.

©The Nature ConservancySouthwestern New Hampshire includes a variety of rare natural communties, such as Atlantic white cedar, and Jesup's milk vetch - along the Connecticut River - and common natural communities, like rich pine forests and northern hardwoods. The region provides critical habitat for turkey, black bear, moose, and deer and offer outstanding opportunities for landscape scale conservation.