The White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Initiative is a collaborative effort among conservation practitioners in the Northern Forests of Maine and New Hampshire. The project resulted in a large landscape conservation strategy that will protect and strengthen the region’s many unique resource assets.
Western Maine and Eastern New Hampshire contain exceptionally productive and large blocks of working forest, famed waterways and wetland complexes, and some of New England’s most dramatic high elevation ridgelines and mountain peaks. The region is critical for the forest products industry and the hub of inland recreation and tourism in Maine. The study area for this project encompasses the Upper Androscoggin River, Mahoosuc Mountains and Lake Umbagog, the Rangeley Lakes, ten of Maine’s fourteen 4,000-foot peaks, 145 miles of the Appalachian Trail, vast working forest, and numerous rare species. The area has been designated as one of the five Focus Landscapes in the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.
Year Published: 2013
State: Maine, New Hampshire
Landscape Context: Inland
Housing Density: Rural
Funding Type: Both (Public and Private)
Habitat Focus: Forest
Organizations Involved:
The Trust for Public Land (TPL)
Values:
Open Space/Habitat, Recreation, Working Land
Stakeholder Involvement:
Stakeholders were involved throughout; a stakeholder group was convened and local experts served as technical advisors.
Planning Process:
The greenprint planning process followed the below stepwise process:
- TPL met with potential public funders to talk about this project and vet it with them.
- Formed an Advisory Committee of local leaders who met three times over the course of several months to confirm three major regional goals and establish metrics for measuring progres towards those goals.
- Formed a Technical Advisory Team that worked on maps and refining metrics for measuring progress.
- Developed parcel prioritization functionality and an on-line mapping site (using DataBasin) so that results could be searched and progress could be tracked.
Desired Outcomes:
The greenprint aimed to provide a GIS-based conservation plan for the region that is tied to clear conservation objectives and metrics for measuring accomplishment of those objectives.
What It Accomplished:
At the time of writing the greenprint catalyzed the protection, in fee, of Crocker Mountain (11,000 acres), Linkletter/Orbeton property (5,800 acres), and Perham Stream (6,600 acres).