I’ve been lucky enough to grow up exploring the wild places of New Hampshire. As a young kid, I would look forward to staying at the AMC huts all year. I vividly remember adventuring up Mt. Willard in the winter, eating “wild snow cones” off tree branches along the way. The feeling at the top was like no other. By 14 I had already bagged quite a few 4,000 footers, taking trips with family or clubs every summer. This exposure to the rugged beauty of the Whites throughout my childhood and adolescence is definitely one of the reasons I became so passionate about conservation. New Hampshire has always held a special place in my heart, and I’m so glad to have this opportunity to help conserve this beautiful piece of nature.
My past conservation endeavors were often fairly independent. For example, a few summers ago I trekked through the Swedish tundra with a map and compass, running from vicious lighting storms, tagging Artic foxes and collecting population data with one field work partner. Being a part of Squam Lakes Conservation Society (SLCS) has introduced me to an entirely different side of conservation. SLCS is a private land trust working to protect the lands of the Squam Lake watershed. This is done mainly through the acquisition of conservation easements on properties, in addition to some fee ownerships. A conservation easement is a legal agreement in which the landowner still retains ownership of their land while giving up most development rights. In turn, the taxes the landowner pays on the land significantly reduce. SLCS then has stewardship duties over the land, monitoring it yearly and providing needed maintenance.
In the case of SLCS and other private land trusts, the organization maintains easements and fee ownerships completely through the support of their members. The relationships with members, volunteers, and landowners are incredibly important to its goals of conservation. In the past 61 years, the SLCS has been able to preserve 30% of the Squam watershed in perpetuity. In 2016, the Land Trust Alliance estimated that land trusts across the US have conserved a total of 56 million acres, more than double the amount of land conserved by the NPS across the lower 48 states. Land trusts like SLCS work so well because it’s a community coming together to voluntarily conserve what they love. And “Conserve what you love” just happens to be the tag line of SLCS’s new Forever Squam campaign in which it hopes to increase the land conserved in the watershed by 10%. This campaign has only recently been announced, and SLCS’s members are already jumping into action. The community cares so much about keeping this land and the habitat it sustains safe for future generations. It gives me hope during an otherwise rather depressing period of doomsday environmental predictions. Communities can and are coming together to protect important natural places like Squam.
Of course, I also understand the disparity between the people that are able to make these donations and conservation promises, and the other community members who may be getting pushed out given rising housing/land prices. It’s hard to balance both sides. One of the basic compromises that is often considered is maintaining public access to conserved lands. Of course, this isn’t always possible depending on who owns the land, where it is, how it is accessed. But there are still many who feel strongly that everyone in the community should be able to access these special places. It’s a sentiment with which I whole heartedly agree. Just the other day I was walking on the SLA’s trail through Belknap Woods (a property on which we hold an easement), admiring the tall old growth trees, mossy glacial boulders, and lily-filled ponds. I’m so glad that everyone has the opportunity to experience its mystic beauty. At the same time, all those who come enjoy this place have inherited the responsibility of protecting and maintaining the landscape by interacting with it respectfully. After all, our conservation is a community endeavor. It truly takes a village, as they say.
Skye graduated from Harvard with a degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, with a focus in animal movement and resource use ecology. Learn more about Skye here!