Conservation
Thousands of acres of Eaton’s natural resource base are protected through various means from development and potentially damaging uses. These lands help maintain water quality in streams, lakes, and ponds; protect important wildlife habitat; provide venues for recreational activities such as hiking and bird watching; and generate income through forest management.
The Town of Eaton owns Foss Mountain and over 2000 acres of town forest land, all of which is managed by the Eaton Conservaiton Commission. Hundreds of additional acres are protected through private conservation easements. Conservation easements legally provide protection in perpetuity whereas town owned lands could be put to other uses by a vote of the town unless otherwise restricted. All of these lands are shown on the interactive map below with the lighter green representing privately protected parcels. Clicking on any parcel will provide its name, size, and the protecting agency.
Much of the rest of Eaton land has some level of protection either through zoning ordinances that limit the type of development that can take place or through current use tax status. This is discussed further in the sections on ownership of 'Open Space' land under 'People' and the 'Conservation Maps' section under 'Maps'.
Upper Saco Valley Land Trust Conservation Priorities
As part of their natural resource inventory in 2011 the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust evaluated all land in thier service area and prioritized areas based on their importance for conservaiton. Guided by the terms of their mission and based on available data at the time they scored areas in twelve features: Aquifers; Brook Trout Headwaters; Farmland and Other Openings; Great Pond Shorelines; Important Bird Areas; Natural Communities and Wildlife Habitats; Open Wetlands; Prime Farmland Soils; Productive Forest Soils; Riparian Zones; Rare Plants, Animals, and Exemplary Natural Communities; and Unfragmented Forest Blocks.
Next they identified areas where many features of value co-occur in the landscape, or occur in close proximity. The “co-occurrence” analysis involves overlaying and summing the scores for each feature to obtain a single map depicting areas of high to low score values. For example, a high score would result where multiple features of conservation interest overlap in a particular area, such as a riparian zone, an aquifer, habitat for a rare bird, and an outstanding example of a globally rare natural community.
For the map below these scores were grouped into five ctegories and the map was colored according to the category for each area.
Next the scores of certain features were adjusted according to the size of the feature and the predicted “ecological integrity” of the surrounding area. For example, scores of resources that are particularly vulnerable to negative impacts of human habitation (wetland natural communities and wildlife habitats, riparian zones, rare species, etc) were “down-ranked” when in close proximity to roads and development, and “up-ranked” when embedded in large un-fragmented forest blocks. This helped differentiate more viable or healthy examples of ecological features score-wise from those with diminished biological prospects.
They also took into consideration large unfragmented forest blocks, connectivity to existing conservation lands, and local considerations relevant to the specific kind of resources present. The resulting map uses a six point scale from 0 for low conservation value to 5 for areas that are valuable for many reasons.
A numerical summary of the information on this map is listed in the table below.
In 2017 The Lakes Region Conservaiton Trust published a conservation plan for their service area. Eaton occupies the northeast corner of this region. The image on the left shows their conservaiton priorities for Eaton.
The dark green areas represent currently conserved land. The bright orange shows areas of primary concern to private and/or public conservation efforts. The light green represents the next highest priority. Some of the land in these priority areas was protected by the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust in 2020 and 2021.
Sources
The first map comes from GranitView and ArcGIS
The Upper Saco Valley Land Trust conservation priority information comes from the 2011 USVLT natural resource inventory
For more information on the Audubon preserve in the southwest corner of Eaton: https://www.nhaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/Hoyt.pdf
Other sources include Town of Eaton, Upper Saco Valley Land Trust, Green Mountain Conservation, Carroll County Registry of Deeds
Related topics: wetlands, groundwater, open water habitat, rare species, production of food and fiber, education, recreation, aesthetics, ownership of open space land, conservation maps