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- Land Conservation,
- Wildlife
Rydstrom Family Forest
The Forest Society has purchased 1,328 acres in Bradford and Hillsborough, to be known as the Rydstrom Family Forest.
In 2001, the Forest Society tried to acquire the property 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.
“As the Forest Society was noticing this property decades ago, so too were the Hillsborough and Bradford conservation commissions,” states Ann Eldridge, chair of the Bradford Conservation Commission. “In 2014, when the property was for sale and being considered for a major shooting range, a group of women from both towns came together to approach the owner about protecting her property. She was receptive, took the property off the market, and considered a conservation easement. Although she didn’t complete the easement process, we stayed in touch, and ten years later approached her about selling the property to the Forest Society. Now, the property is protected finally protected forever.”
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,” states 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 type 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.
“Having walked much of this property over the last ten years, working to find a conservation solution, I am excited that this property is now permanently conserved,” states Andy Deegan, land protection specialist with Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust. “The Forest Society will be good stewards of the Rydstrom Family Forest, an extremely important wildlife corridor which connects many other important conservation properties.”
Lorin Rydstrom, a Forest Society board member for 9 years and a member of the Forest Society’s Forestry Committee, passed away in September 2024. He spent his whole life working in the lumber industry and was an outdoor enthusiast devoted to land conservation. With a generous donation from the Rydstrom family and a grant from an anonymous foundation, the Forest Society purchased the property for its permanent protection, creating the Rydstrom Family Forest.
