Canaan
Canaan Town Administrator Michael Samson said last week his Selectboard opposes two of the plan’s four alternatives because the board believes they potentially restrict use of the land.
An open house to present the plan is scheduled for Tuesday, at 5 p.m., at the Kilton Library in West Lebanon, and will include an opportunity for residents and officials to ask questions.
Samson said Canaan strongly supports conservation efforts but wants “a balance” that represents an agreement with the town, similar to what Canaan agreed to with the Fish and Wildlife Service on what is known as the Bear Hill property.
“We don’t know if it would adversely affect us but we have a feeling it would,” Samson said of two proposed alternatives.
Under what is known as alternative “C,” the Fish and Wildlife Service would “manage” 11,550 acres over 15 years in about 197,000 acres of the refuge’s four-state region, which also includes Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Under alternative “D,” “a wilderness alternative with no habitat management” would include 235,800 acres in the four states.
The refuge includes the entire Connecticut River watershed from the Canadian border to Long Island Sound. However, the Fish and Wildlife Service manages only a small percentage of the acreage. The conservation plan could increase management to between 100,000 and 235,800 acres.
The ownership in New Hampshire would total between 8,700 acres under alternative A and 55,500 acres under D.
In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year, Samson and the Canaan Selectboard laid out their objections to the two larger alternatives, including concerns of eminent domain.
“While there are assurances that eminent domain or ‘taking’ will not be used, the rules allow it and there have been instances where this strategy has been used and certainly used as leverage to coerce landowners to settle,” the letter said.
Jim O’Brien, director of external affairs with the New Hampshire chapter of The Nature Conservancy, which will be at Tuesday’s forum and works with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said officials negotiate only with landowners willing to sell.
“Either Fish and Wildlife will purchase property outright or they will obtain a conservation easement. They don’t threaten. A no is a no,” O’Brien said.
Attempts to reach the Conte Refuge office in Massachusetts and manager Andy French were unsuccessful on Friday.
O’Brien said the proposals identify areas in the Connecticut River Watershed that refuge officials believes are important for conservation and wildlife habitat management.
O’Brien said Tuesday’s forum in West Lebanon is a chance to explain what the boundaries of the refuge are and what areas are seen as priorities. Additionally, the forum will outline management activities, which are described by the Nature Conservancy as “minimal to nonexistent.”
“We are not saying Fish and Wildlife would purchase 100 percent of the land,” O’Brien said. “We are saying that these areas are important for wildlife and forest management.”
Samson said he believes there are more than 10,000 acres identified in the towns of Lyme, Dorchester and Canaan, though he was not certain the exact amount in Canaan.
In the letter to Fish and Wildlife, the Selectboard explained that a 2013 conservation easement given to the service on the Bear Hill property near the Mascoma River headwaters contained the provisions they support, including allowing the land to continue to be a “working forest,” with logging, sugaring and recreation.
Further, the town continues to receive property taxes through current use.
“We want the same rules” for the refuge’s conservation area as for the Bear Hill property, Samson said last week.
“We want to keep as much as we can as a working forest. This ought to be a collaboration, not done in a forced manner,” he said. “If there is a change in the agreement, it could change the rules and there is nothing we can do about it. Right now, it is not clear.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
