By GLYNIS HART
[email protected]
LEMPSTER — Scenic Lempster, home of the state’s only commercial wind farm, boasts some of the highest quality wildlife habitat in the state as well as the headwaters of the Ashuelot River. More than 16 percent of Lempster is conserved land, including long stretches of shoreland and 111 miles of rivers and streams that feed the Ashuelot, Cold and Sugar Rivers.
The town conservation commission moved last year to have a trail system built in the Long Pond Town Forest, on the opposite side of Lempster Mountain Road from the Ashuelot River Headwaters Forest, but that project appears to be waiting for funding.
Lempster’s Long Pond Forest trail system will be the latest step in local efforts to conserve the Long Pond Town Forest, which is protected from commercial development. The 640-acre tract was preserved with the help of the Society for the Protection of NH Forests (SPNHF), holder of a conservation easement on the property, and the Town of Lempster. The trail system was proposed to be marked in the spring of 2018, in conjunction with a proposed timber sale on this property.
The project was approved by voters in 2013 and finalized by the select board in Dec. 2014.
Lempster’s Duck Pond Nature Trail has a trail head on Long Pond Road, near the Long Pond Forest.
Currently, Long Pond has a public beach, picnic area and boat launch for the use of town residents.
For the Long Pond Forest trail, Lempster town forester Swift Corbin sought a grant from the Quabbin-to-Cardigan Initiative, a two-state effort tying together the Monadnock Highlands of north-central Massachusetts and western New Hampshire. Reaching one hundred miles from the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts northward to Mount Cardigan and the White Mountain National Forest, the “Q2C” rises between the Merrimack and Connecticut River Valleys.
Quabbin-to-Cardigan Partnership includes private organizations and public agencies conserving (on a strictly willing-seller/donor basis) ecologically significant forests and key connections between them for wildlife passage and human recreation.
In addition to land conservation grants, the Q2C partnership offers small grants to support the development, improvement, and maintenance of hiking trails in the target region. Q2C has funded more than 43 trail projects have been funded since 2010, improving nearly 70 miles of trails within the region by trail planning, developing parking areas, signs, trail maps, and trail guides, and purchasing trail lands.
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