A large property in New Hampshire that is part of one of the largest intact forests south of the White Mountains is now protected forever.
The environmental group the Forest Society announced last week that it has purchased 1,328 acres in the towns of Bradford and Hillsborough. Forest Society officials said the property will now be known as the Rydstrom Family Forest.
The Forest Society originally tried to acquire the property in 2001 when a Canadian timber company sold the land on the open market. Again in 2014, Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust (Ausbon Sargent), with the help from the conservation commissions from the towns of Bradford and Hillsborough, nearly secured a conservation easement on the land.
The project was finally completed by the Forest Society in June 2025, with Ausbon Sargent and the Bradford Conservation Commission assisting the Forest Society on negotiating a purchase of the land using funds from a generous donor and an anonymous foundation.
The 1,328-acre property is located within a landscape of interconnected, biologically diverse forest blocks and is a core focus area of the Quabbin to Cardigan Partnership’s conservation plan. Formed in 2003, the partnership includes private organizations and state agencies from New Hampshire and Massachusetts who are focused on conserving land in the Monadnock Highlands of north-central Massachusetts and western New Hampshire.
“The property is a part of one of the largest remaining areas of intact, interconnected, ecologically significant forests south of the White Mountains,” said Jack Savage, president of the Forest Society. “It has always been on our radar and finally persistence has won out.”
The property is adjacent to and near more than 3,500 acres of other conservation lands, including Aiken Pasture Town Forest, Bradford Bog, Low State Forest, and the Forest Society’s Andrews and Jones conservation easements and Wenny-Baker Forest on Thompson Hill.
The Rydstrom Family Forest is primarily a mixed northern hardwood forest with lesser amounts of white pine, hemlock, and spruce, and it has more than 118 acres of wetlands and several small streams.
The forest was logged extensively between 1996 and 2000 and has seen some additional commercial firewood cutting over the last few years. There is a network of 3.5 miles of improved woods roads providing good access throughout the property.
