HANOVER — Adair Mulligan, executive director of the Hanover Conservancy, paused at the the entrance of the Headwaters Forest and took a deep breath.
“Oh, what a beautiful day,” she exclaimed, before hiking to the trail’s kiosk off Three Mile Road, where a stand of tamarack trees appeared in the distance. Mid-sentence, she stopped to talk about the trees, which are also known as the American larch.
“They’re a wonderful wetland tree that is deciduous and has this lovely golden foliage,” Mulligan said on a Monday hike earlier this month at the 140-acre property owned by the Hanover nonprofit she has led for 15 years. Come back in October, she said, to see them in their full color.
Mulligan, 71, has a knack for appreciating the beauty, biology and history of the land she’s worked so hard to protect during her time as the organization’s first full-time executive director, a job that she will retire from in December. In addition to Mulligan, the nonprofit organization has one other full-time employee and a part-time worker.
Founded in 1961, it manages conservation easements on privately-owned properties to protect them, owns and manages eight parcels of conserved land in Hanover, including the Mink Brook Nature Preserve, Balch Hill Natural Area and Lower Slade Brook Natural Area. Throughout the year, the organization sponsors or partners with other groups for events including an annual hawk watch, nature walks and lectures. It has an annual budget of around $310,000.
During a hike last Monday, Mulligan spoke with enthusiasm about the organization and the land it’s helped to protect.
“I have a reputation to my family for going around the barn first before I get to the point,” Mulligan, who lived in Lyme before moving to Orford a few years ago, said with a chuckle. Over the course of the next hour, Mulligan did just that.
She spoke about a glacial erratic near Hewes Brook (“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” Mulligan said, pulling up a photo of the giant quartz on her phone. “Look at that. I lost it when I saw it for the first time.”) About a toad on the trail (“Bufo americanus,” she stated. “Such a funny Latin name, Bufo … You wonder who named him.”) And about maps. (“One of the things you probably figured out about me is that I am addicted to maps,” she remarked.)
In a sense, she is viewing her upcoming retirement as an opportunity.
“I can’t deny that I’m in my 70s,” Mulligan said about her decision to retire. She’s also looking forward to stepping back from some of the administrative tasks such as budgeting and writing policies.
Environmental stewardship has been an important part of Mulligan’s life since she was a child. Her parents were both dedicated to the outdoors — she described her mother as a “Mainer and outdoors woman” — and were active in land conservation efforts. She grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and spent summers in Maine.
“We all need to take responsibility for making the world a better place,” Mulligan said. It’s an ethos that’s informed her career path and volunteer efforts for more than 50 years.
When Mulligan arrived at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., in the early 1970s, she wasn’t quite sure what to study. During her freshman year, she tried different majors and knew she had to make a decision. Then her mother made a suggestion: What about the college’s new environmental biology program? “You like the woods,” Mulligan recalled her mother saying. “Can’t you do something with that?”
She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1975 and a master’s degree in 1977. She completed a research project in forest ecology on an island off the Maine coast. Eventually, she worked as a loon biologist for the New Hampshire Audubon and spent around 20 years at the Connecticut River Joint Commissions before taking on the her role at the Hanover Conservancy.
During the hike at Headwaters, she pointed to areas where sheep once grazed and old stone walls that marked property boundaries. The land used to be part of the Kendall Family Farm and she pointed out the site of a former beaver pond where children in the family learned to ice skate.
“I think it’s important to interpret for people what the human history of the land is and how that really rests on the natural resources of the land,” Mulligan said, adding that it can lead people to feeling more connected to the environment.
Mulligan’s ability to combine the human and ecological history of properties makes her stand out, Gail McPeek, an emeritus Hanover Conservancy board member who was on the board when Mulligan was hired, said.
“People just love to hear her stories,” McPeek said in a phone interview. “We love to understand the history of the lands when we protect and conserve them. Sometimes that takes a lot of digging into history and old files. She really loves to do that as well.”
Over the years, she’s also built partnerships with other nonprofit organizations and civic groups, exploring ways that they can work together. She lauds the work of the Upper Valley Trails Alliance’s High School Trail Corps and how they’ve helped improve the conservancy’s properties.
“Adair has figured out how to both extend the profile of the Hanover Conservancy, maintain what they have over the years and improve those things from a trails perspective,” UVTA Executive Director Russell Hirschler said.
Hirschler has known Mulligan for nearly 25 years, both through the nonprofit organizations they lead and when they overlapped as members of the Lyme Conservation Commission. One of the first things Mulligan said to Hirschler when she became executive director of the conservancy was: “Why would we develop expertise on trails when we could just work with you?”
Hirschler, who has led the UVTA since 2008, has also been impressed by Mulligan’s ability to bring different organizations together to protect land. The Headwaters Forest, for example, involved the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (LCHIP), The Conservation Fund, New Hampshire’s Moose Plate Program, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, UVTA and Trout Unlimited (Greater Upper Valley chapter), among other organizations.
“To be in these sort of nonprofit and quasi-nonprofit worlds for that long in organizations where you have to have that Yankee ingenuity, stretch a dollar a mile … it’s not an easy thing to do, but Adair has figured how to do it and bring partners together and get these projects done,” Hirschler said.
During Mulligan’s tenure, the number of properties and acres the Conservancy protected tripled compared with those protected during the previous half century of the organization’s history, according to a Sept. 2 news release announcing her retirement. She also helped Hanover and other organizations protect another 450 acres throughout town.
Hanover Town Manager Rob Houseman started working with Mulligan about nine years ago, first as director of the town’s planning, zoning, and codes department. He has appreciated her input and support of town projects, including Mink Brook Community Forest off Greensboro Road.
“She quietly worked behind the scenes,” to help with fundraising and connect town officials to other organizations supportive of the project, Houseman said in a phone interview. “She’s certainly left her print on the town in a very positive way and her approach and demeanor enabled projects to come to fruition and benefit the greater community.”
The Conservancy is aware of the region’s housing crisis and Mulligan noted that the 2021-26 strategic plan states that the organization will “be open to opportunities to achieve land conservation while allowing for thoughtful development.”
The organization is currently looking for Mulligan’s replacement. Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, natural resources, land management or a related field, according to a job description on the Conservancy’s website: hanoverconservancy.org/about-us/employment/. They must also have experience in grant writing, fundraising, land conservation, stewardship and land easements.
A selection committee plans to begin reviewing applications on Oct. 1, and the organization hopes to bring on the new executive director in December.
In retirement — if you can even call it that — Mulligan plans to put her efforts into volunteering for land conservation efforts throughout the region.
“I would love to volunteer for the Conservancy,” she said. That could include leading hikes on the lands she loves so much.