Conservation Land Home The Legacy Local Support Where We Are Now

Working in accordance with the town-wide survey results and the 2008 Master Plan recommendations, the Tamworth Conservation commission continues play a part in promoting and acquiring conservation land. We concentrate on three priorities:

• Continuing our 50 year tradition of protecting lake and stream shorelines

• Protecting active farmland and prime agricultural soils

• Preserving wildlife habitat connectivity between the White Mountains and the Ossipee Mountains.

Thanks to the combined effort of the Conservation Commission, government agencies and private land trusts, great progress has been made, including:

• Five of Tamworth's seven state designated great ponds have 100% of their shoreline protected. Great Hill Pond has over 80% of the shoreline protected. All these ponds have public access. Twenty-six miles of stream bank have been protected on third order and higher streams (larger rivers). In addition, some of the significant first and second order streams, such as Sanger and Sanborn Brooks, are almost entirely protected.

• TCC, working both independently and in cooperation with Lakes Region Conservation Trust, has been instrumental in protecting agricultural viability on three working farms and one separate hay field on prime agricultural land. Green Mountain Conservation Group holds agricultural easements on two other working farms.

• By taking advantage of previously protected large blocks of conservation land in the northern and western areas of the town, key components of habitat connectivity have been added to our conservation land inventory. Of prime importance are road crossing areas for wide ranging mammals. At present, we have four landscape-scale “stepping stones” or “nodes” ranging in area from 500 to 2000 acres and numerous high activity wildlife crossing areas protected on one or both sides of the roads. But there is more to do before we have a contiguous corridor from the White Mountains to the Ossipee Mountains.

The tables and chart below show how Tamworth's conservation land is distributed between the various land trusts and government agencies. The latest TCC inventory (January, 2024) shows 16,727 acres of conservation land. However, it is important to note that new land can be added at any time by a myriad of different organizations and there is no single clearinghouse where all the data can be collected, in spite of the efforts of NH-GRANIT at the University of New Hampshire.