Bear Paw Regional Greenways

Bear-Paw Print - Fall 2006

Here are some selected articles from our latest newsletter. For a complete copy, click here. An archive of all of our previous editions can be found on the bottom of this page.

The Steve Cruikshank Memorial - Conservation Easement Closes a Gap
A Bear-Paw Profile - Corey Colwell
Note from the Chair
New Website Through a Samuel P. Hunt Foundation Grant
Samuel P. Pardoe Foundation Grant Helps Build GIS Capacity
New England Grassroots Environment Fund Supports Landowner Outreach Effort
Bear-Paw Receives Moose Plate Grant to Complete a Conservation Plan for Region
Growing the greenways
New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Supports Bear-Paw
Bear-Paw Participates in the Federal Employee Workplace Giving Program!
New IRS Rules on IRAs and Charitable Giving
12th Year Annual Meeting
Congress Increases Tax Incentives for Conservation Easements!

The Steve Cruikshank Memorial - Conservation Easement Closes a Gap

By Al Jaeger

As Steve and Irene Cruikshank grew up in coastal Rockingham County, they saw the disappearance of woodlots separating neighborhoods, fields for back-lot baseball, and other wild and semi-wild places. So when Steve and Irene bought their land in Deerfield in 1989, they always planned to place it under permanent protection. Steve was a carpenter and Irene assisted as they built their fine handmade post and beam house, brick hearth for the wood stove, and solar disc and batteries for electricity. The lands abutting three sides, altogether six private woodlots totaling almost 400 acres, comprise the Great Brook Corridor protected with conservation easements.

Steve and Irene’s land was the “missing tooth” for the brook, for protection and movement of wildlife, and for a four-mile footpath open to the public from Harvey Road to Coffeetown Road. Two brooks from the western boundary of the Cruikshank land flow down to Great Brook. One of them passes through mature mixed hardwoods and over stones and roots creating small ledgy waterfalls. It drops into a black pool surrounding a mossy boulder where Irene often sits thinking of Steve who died 3½ years ago at 51, still full of dreams. Both streams create sunny marshes as they enter Great Brook creating an isolated paradise of cattails, red-winged blackbirds and dragonflies now completely surrounded by protected land. Stunning granite outcrops cross the land in east-west ridges sheltering the two little streams and forcing dramatic turns of Great Brook as it emerges from forest to wide marshes. One outcrop looms 90 feet above the south bank of one of the streams.

Irene owns 30 acres of extraordinary land. Her home is at the southern tip and her donated conservation easement on the remaining 26 acres to be held by Bear-Paw, is no longer “the missing tooth” in the Great Brook Corridor. The Town of Deerfield will contribute $3,500 to the transaction costs associated with the project and will hold an executory interest in the easement. Irene says, “Steve loved wild places. For recreation he always went to somewhere as untouched as possible. Protecting our own wild and natural land is a perfect tribute to his memory.”

A Bear-Paw Profile - Corey Colwell

Two vacations and a conservation easement have all played a part in helping Corey Colwell realize his dreams. Corey grew up in Strafford and always hoped someday to have his own home on a good-sized piece of Strafford land. It was 1997 and he had just turned 32 when he found what he wanted – 218 forested acres on a hillside above Bow Lake. But you can imagine the price! Corey had a good career with his own surveying company following a degree from the UNH Thompson School, but the deal still seemed impossible.

Here’s where creative use of a conservation easement made it possible. With his plan to conserve 150 acres of the property, Corey worked with the Planning and Zoning Boards to get a subdivision of three lots to sell and a private road extension into his remaining 206-acre piece. His conservation easement became Bear-Paw’s first in 1998. His property now contains the 150 acres protected by the easement, and a reserve area large enough for house sites for future Colwells.

What about those vacations? In 1999 Corey took 3½ weeks of backed up vacation time in North Carolina where he worked hard as an apprentice in a post and beam construction outfit. Back home he realized another dream designing and crafting the beams for his own house. His surveyor colleagues helped assemble those beams in a long weekend of “house raising.” And in 2002, Corey decided to visit the home of his favorite form of martial arts, the Philippines. There he met Dahriz Lucero and persuaded her to come to New Hampshire. They were married in 2005. Dahriz is still getting used to sighting the occasional bear, moose and beaver that call Corey’s property home.

Aside from the forest, wildlife, and scenic values of the Colwell easement itself, it has added worth because it abuts the 600-acre Strafford Town Forest lands, which in turn link to the vast acreage of the Blue Hills Foundation properties. Bear-Paw thanks Corey Colwell once again for an easement that builds an important greenway.

Note from the Chair

There was exciting conservation news out of Washington this summer. A new bill signed by the President far more than doubles the tax benefits to landowners donating conservation easements. Check the article on Page 8 for further information. This bill is presently in effect only for 2006 and 2007. Congress may renew the bill for future years, but as it stands now, the incentive expires at the end of 2007. If you’ve been thinking about protecting your land with a conservation easement, now is the time to take advantage of this considerable tax incentive!

Best wishes,
Harmony Anderson

New Website Through a Samuel P. Hunt Foundation Grant

Bear-Paw will soon have a new web presence thanks to a $4,000 grant from the Samuel P. Hunt Foundation. The grant is helping support a total renovation of our website. In the past, our website was maintained free-of-charge by Melissa French at Netcastles.org. Thank you Melissa!

For the new site, SilverTech, Inc., (www.silvertech.com) agreed to contribute to the overhaul by offering a substantial discount on its services to help make the change affordable. The updated site will feature a new look and a content management system that will allow Bear-Paw to easily update the site’s contents on its own. We hope that the new site will allow us to communicate better with landowners, our members and others interested in land conservation. The website will now provide timely information about land conservation options to landowners, local conservation projects, and Bear-Paw events. We are also hoping to use the site to enhance our ability to raise resources online. Please take a look at the new site at bear-paw.org in November and let us know what you think!

Samuel P. Pardoe Foundation Grant Helps Build GIS Capacity

Thanks to the efforts of Nancy Lambert, a volunteer for Bear-Paw as part of her master’s degree work at the School for International Training; Bear-Paw has increased its capacity to use maps and other geospatial data to describe its land protection projects and conservation initiatives. Nancy helped secure a donation of the GIS mapping software, Arcview, from ESRI as well as a $1,725 grant from the Samuel P. Pardoe Foundation to fund the acquisition of GPS and GIS equipment, software, and training.

This GIS capacity will help Bear-Paw by increasing its ability to use limited conservation resources wisely through better conservation planning. And, it will help Bear-Paw attract funding and other support for its land protection efforts. It has already been used in successful applications for funding local land protection projects, including an LCHIP grant received earlier this year.

New England Grassroots Environment Fund Supports Landowner Outreach Effort

Bear-Paw recently received a $1,000 grant from the New England Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF ) to help support a landowner outreach effort currently in progress. Using a list of landowners it generated, Bear-Paw is contacting many of the landowners in its seven-town region to introduce them to the organization and to offer them a complimentary copy of a useful conservation planning booklet, "Conserving Your Land – Options for New Hampshire Landowners." Bear-Paw plans to provide free booklets to the first 100 landowners who respond to the offer.

“Conserving Your Land” describes many of the issues for landowners to consider and it gives specific examples of successful land conservation projects in the state. The booklet will help interested landowners understand what conservation options are available to them to protect their land. Bear-Paw will also provide an opportunity for these landowners to discuss their situation with one of the professional land conservation specialists working with Bear-Paw. If you are a landowner interested in conservation, please contact the office for more information on the outreach effort.

Bear-Paw Receives Moose Plate Grant to Complete a Conservation Plan for Region

Bear-Paw Regional Greenways received a $9,438 grant from the New Hampshire State Conservation Committee “Moose” Conservation License Plate grant program to help develop a Conservation Plan to guide its land protection efforts in partnership with the seven communities that it serves: Candia, Deerfield, Epsom, Northwood, Nottingham, Raymond, and Strafford. The Conservation Plan will identify and describe priority conservation areas within the region and the strategies to protect these areas.

The conservation priorities will reflect those areas that protect wildlife habitat, rare plants, animals, and natural communities, water quality and quantity, working forests, farmland soils, and maintain connectivity between large blocks of conserved land. The Plan will also identify potential greenways to connect the Bear-Paw region to nearby conservation focus areas such as Great Bay, Moose Mountains, and the Merrimack River Valley. Our goal is to conserve areas with high natural resource values within the Bear-Paw region and to expand landowner and community support for land conservation.

The priority conservation areas are likely to encompass:

• Key wildlife habitats and associated native wildlife species, including the full array of representative habitats that occur in the Bear-Paw region including:

– Large unfragmented habitat blocks and matrix forest types such as Appalachian oak-pine forests
– High Value habitat features such as wildlife travel corridors, riparian areas, wetlands, south-facing slopes, vernal pools, old growth forests, grasslands, and higher elevation areas
– Greenways that maintain links between existing conservation lands such as state parks, town-owned conservation lands, and permanently protected private lands

• Watersheds that harbor important wetland complexes, diverse aquatic animal communities, and other water resources such as:

– Wetland complexes and vernal pools
– River and stream systems
– Lakes and ponds
– Riparian areas along undeveloped shorelines
– Land above stratified drift aquifers and within the zones of contribution of public water supply wells

• Threatened native plant communities, rare plant populations, and areas of high biological diversity

• Important farmland soils and working agricultural lands

• Working forests that can provide sustainably managed and harvested forest products

• Recreational and scenic resources including trail corridors, scenic views, and historically important sites

Bear-Paw has helped to protect over 2,100 acres in the region by working with landowners committed to conservation; many of these landowners donated, or sold at significant discounts, the development rights to their land. Communities in the Bear-Paw region have created natural resource inventories; drafted open space protection plans; formed open space committees; and/or contributed significant funding to land conservation projects. Land conservation continues as a crucial issue for our communities.

The New Hampshire Wildlife Action Plan specifically notes, “…species restricted to southern New Hampshire are at immediate risk.” A Conservation Plan focused on the Bear-Paw region is needed to ensure that these species and their habitats are protected and that linkages among conservation blocks maximize the conservation value of existing protected lands.

Bear-Paw staff, volunteers, and consultants will develop the Plan with public and partner input and will build on priorities identified in other local, regional and statewide conservation plans. Ibis Wildlife Consulting of Newmarket was hired to assist in gathering input, researching existing plans, and writing the Plan. Bear-Paw is hosting a Conservation Roundtable on November 13th at the Deerfield Town Hall to provide an overview of the Conservation Plan development, gather local input, and discuss potential strategies on implementing land conservation projects.

The long-term value of a successful Conservation Plan, as the region continues to grow, is clean and available drinking water, healthy plant and animal populations, working forests, productive farmlands, and a high quality of life in our Bear-Paw communities. For more information on the New Hampshire Fish and Game’s Wildlife Action Plan, visit www.wildlife.state.nh.us/wildlife/wildlife_plan.htm.

Growing the greenways

Bear-Paw Regional Greenways is an organization with the important mission to protect open space in this part of New Hampshire. The challenge is that with each passing year more and more land in our region is subdivided for development, while at the same time the cost of land escalates rapidly.

In order to meet this challenge, the Board of Directors made a decision early in 2006 to increase the level of resources available to its land protection efforts. This will allow Bear-Paw to respond more effectively to landowners in this region who seek to preserve their land. The cost of the expansion is $22,000, with an $11,000 grant from the Barbara K. & Cyrus B. Sweet III Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation already received to help. The remaining $11,000 will need to be covered by increased and new member contributions.

In addition to new membership initiatives, during the coming months all Bear-Paw members will be asked to help support the expansion so that the good work begun this year can continue. Ongoing membership support is vital to the success of Bear-Paw.

Bruce Adami
Chairman, Membership Development Committee

New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Supports Bear-Paw

Bear-Paw has seen a dramatic increase in the number of opportunities to work with landowners and towns on conservation projects so it is expanding its land protection efforts so that it has the resources to respond to opportunities as they arise. As the number and complexity of projects increases, Bear-Paw will now be able to manage more land protection projects, to identify additional sources of project funding, and to complete projects that might not otherwise be possible.

The Barbara K. & Cyrus B. Sweet III Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (NHCF) recently presented Bear-Paw with an $11,000 grant to partially support this expansion. We want to thank the Sweets and the NHCF for their generosity and for their confidence in our organization. Bear-Paw plans to build its membership so that it can fully fund this expansion independently by 2008.

Growing will allow Bear-Paw to increase the number and quality of contacts with landowners, to accelerate the pace of land protection projects once interested landowners have been identified, and to improve our ability to obtain outside funding to complete these projects.

Bear-Paw Participates in the Federal Employee Workplace Giving Program!

Bear-Paw has recently been approved to participate in the 2006 New Hampshire/Southern Maine Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) supported by Federal Employees. The CFC is the world’s largest workplace giving campaign and Bear-Paw hopes to take advantage of this opportunity to educate federal employees about its work in New Hampshire and to gather their support for its efforts.

Bear-Paw is one of a few opportunities for participating federal employees to directly support land conservation efforts in New Hampshire. Daniel Kern, Executive Director of Bear-Paw, said, “We are very excited to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign this year and in the future. We hope that this will be a great way to build financial support for the organization and awareness of our programs. We want to thank Federal Employees for supporting the campaign and Bear-Paw.” Federal employees can support us through the campaign by designating Bear-Paw (#6048) on their CFC pledge card.

New IRS Rules on IRAs and Charitable Giving

Among the charitable tax incentives included in a recently passed pension reform bill is an IRA rollover provision that allows individuals age 70½ and older to make charitable donations up to $100,000 from an IRA without having to count the donation as taxable income. This provision will be in effect for two years, allowing the charitable community to demonstrate its value as an incentive for increased giving that could be expanded in the future. If you are interested in taking advantage of this opportunity, please contact the Bear-Paw office.

12th Year Annual Meeting - Saturday, February 10, 2007 • 9am

Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 10, 2007, for a day of information, good food, and fun at the Bear-Paw Annual Meeting to be held once again at Coe-Brown Northwood Academy. In this year of Bear-Paw’s expansion, there will be much news to report:

• Land protection updates
• Progress in the work funded by the grants you’ve read about in this issue
• A display of the new website
• Plans for the coming year

A speaker to be announced will entertain us with information about our region’s natural environment. And, before we set off for the afternoon’s field trip, we’ll enjoy a hearty lunch spread that will set us up for a good hike or snowshoe expedition on conservation land. Your postcard invitation with more details will be mailed in January. Plan to join us!

Congress Increases Tax Incentives for Conservation Easements!

The President recently signed into law a bill that includes new income tax incentives for landowners who are conserving their land for future generations. The new law raised the deductions landowners can take for donating all or a portion of a conservation easement from 30% of their adjusted gross income in any year to 50%.

The law also extends the period for the donor to take that deduction from 5 to 15 years. As an example, a landowner earning $50,000 a year who donated an easement on a property with development rights valued at half a million dollars by a qualified appraiser, in the past could take a $15,000 deduction that year and for 5 additional years – a total of $90,000. Under the new law, that landowner may deduct $25,000 the first year and for an additional 15 years – that’s $400,000 of tax deductions! Even greater advantages are allowed for those who make more than half their annual income from their land. Check the Land Trust Alliance website for further details at www.lta.org.

At present the law is only in effect for 2006 and 2007. Congress may renew it, but for anyone who has been considering a conservation easement, now is the time to take advantage of these new incentives!