Recent News

By Dave Anderson, Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, for the Manchester, NH, Union Leader

More than once, a dyed-in-the-plaid-wool-hunting-jacket old-timer has reminisced to me about legendary game bird and deer hunting opportunities of their youth in 1940s and '50s New Hampshire. And then, just as often, wistfully lamented: “Those woods have all grown up now and there's no hunting like THAT anymore.”

by Tonia Shoumatoff, Millbrook Independent, Millbrook, NY, February 28, 2016

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service disclosed this week plans to protect 2,000 acres in a strategic conservation area that includes parts of Amenia, Dover and Sharon, Connecticut. The targeted areas will be part of The Great Thicket Wildlife Refuge that eventually may cover 36,727 acres of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine.

Over the last 100 years, as shrublands and young forests across the Northeast have been cleared for development or have grown into mature forests, populations of more than 65 songbirds, mammals, reptiles, pollinators and other wildlife that depend on this type of habitat have fallen alarmingly.

By Robert Miller of the Danbury News Times

It’s rabbit-tat — brushy, cut-over land turning back to forest. It’s where New England cottontail rabbits — the state’s only native rabbit species — hop and breed and get pounced on for a predator’s meal.

It’s also land necessary to many of the state’s declining bird species. A host of songbirds nest only in that brushy land. Two game birds — the ruffed grouse and American woodcock — depend on it as well.