“Development on private lands is nibbling at some wild places and gulping others. Even on the White Mountains wild places are being roaded, logged, motorized and commercialized making the designation of wilderness lands the crucial counterbalance for the loss of wild New Hampshire.” - Fred Lavigne, Center Sandwich, New Hampshire.
New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest is remarkable for a number of things: as the largest area of public land in New England; as one of the most popular forests in the entire National Forest System with over 7 million visitors per year; and, as a living testament to nature's resilience in this part of the world.
The White Mountains' natural treasures are priceless. Its total acreage places it among the largest roadless complexes east of the Mississippi. Signs, sights and sounds of wildlife are everywhere: moose, spruce grouse, migratory songbirds, coyotes, fisher, beaver, deer-sometimes tracks of rare pine marten and sightings of the northern goshawk. Along some river valleys there are still remnants of the original forest, reminders of what it all once looked like.
Restoration and Now, Protection
The forest is on the way to recovery. But its magnificent vistas and quiet streams are still threatened by pressure for increased logging and efforts to open the forest to dirt bikes and off-road vehicles. The White Mountains are just a day's drive from the East Coast megalopolis. Additional Wilderness designations in the White Mountains will ensure that the process of recovery shifts seamlessly into a perpetuity of protection.
Only two percent of New Hampshire's land area is protected in the state's four Wilderness areas: the Pemigewasset, the Sandwich Range, the Presidential Range-Dry River, Great Gulf. A fifth wilderness in the Whites, Caribou/Speckled Mountain, lies just over the border in Maine.
An effective coalition of New Hampshire activists proposes the creation of two new Wilderness areas and sizable extensions to two existing areas.
New Wilderness Areas
Wild River: New Hampshire conservationists have made protection of this 70,000-acre river valley a priority for over three decades. Wild River's interior valley, surrounded by high peaks, offers rare, sheltered lowland habitat for many of the shy and sensitive species that find a home in the White Mountains.
Dartmouth Range: Imagine a Wilderness area in the northeast with no trails at all. That's the Dartmouth Range in the northwestern corner of the White Mountains. Its 15,000 roadless and trail-less acres offer hikers an intense, solitary and untamed Wilderness experience.
And Bigger Wilderness Areas
Sandwich Range Wilderness extensions: The Congress designated the existing Sandwich Range Wilderness of 23,000 acres in 1984. Its gentle profile forms the southern viewshed of the White Mountain National Forest. New Hampshire conservationists propose to add 32,000 acres to the Sandwich Range protected area. The proposed additional wilderness would protect a number of historical and cultural resources as well as the area's ecological features.
Pemigewasset Wilderness extensions: The 123,000-acre Pemigewasset region is the behemoth of the roadless areas on the national forest. When the 45,000-acre Pemigewasset Wilderness Area was formally designated by Congress in 1984, many conservationists vowed to pursue additional protection for the lands adjacent to it because the extensive roadless area that encircled the oval-shaped wilderness area lay at the very heart of the forest.
