Project Location: Strafford, NH

Project Description:

A forest management plan reads a piece of land for what it already is, then sets a course for tending it toward the owner’s goals.

In 2017, shortly after the property was acquired, a Strafford County forester from UNH walked the land and recommended a comprehensive Forest Management Plan, prepared by a certified Technical Service Provider. Three goals shaped it: to increase biodiversity, to create early successional habitat, and to open access across the property for timber stand improvement, timber harvest, and exploration.

An EQIP grant funded the work. In October 2019, a crew cleared four acres behind the house to establish early successional habitat, returning in 2020 to cut an access road to the rear property line. The effect has been dramatic. Views now open to historic trees and old pastures, sunlight reached the forest floor, wild blueberries came into flower, and oak seedlings began to emerge from bare soil.

The land is now an ongoing study, its returns observed and recorded season by season.