Conservation Coming Down the Pike

Written by David Johnson
Photographed by Jerry Monkman

There’s 36 acres - and there’s 36 acres. The Pike property is the latter, a small but mighty land that protects the drinking water for the Town of Durham and UNH, gives shelter to valuable wildlife, and connects to a tapestry of conserved land.

In the 1920s, the Pike family from Boston would caravan to Durham to spend their summer days. The bucolic property had everything anyone would look for: open fields, shady forests, and plenty of frontage on the Lamprey River.

Now, over a century later, Bonnie Pike has worked with SELT and the Town of Durham to ensure this land, steeped in family history and natural resource value, has been protected forever.

In July, following a three-year process, the paperwork was completed, the easement was filed, and Bonnie exhaled a sign of relief: the long journey was completed and the property that meant so much to her personally and to her late husband Wilson had been conserved. (Durham owns the land and SELT holds the conservation easement.)

Duane Hyde, SELT’s Land Conservation Director, Bonnie Pike, and Gail Jablonski, Business Manager for the Town of Durham.

“For me it’s a win/win,” Bonnie says. “I’m able to conserve this property and preserve the character of the area and Durham gains an important land for their water protection.”

Indeed, that’s what makes the Pike property so valuable. At 36 acres, it may not necessarily wow with sheer size, but what it may not have in quantity, it 100% makes up for in quality.

Beyond valuable wildlife habitat and vernal pools teeming with life in the spring season, the property’s proximity to the federally designated Wild and Scenic Lamprey River makes it immensely valuable in its own right.

The true kicker is its fit into the patchwork of nearly 400 acres of contiguous conserved land, specifically how it fills in a gap between the SELT-conserved and Town-owned 54-acre Thompson Forest on one side and the SELT held conservation easement on the Burrows tract on the other side.

This is of particular importance as the Thompson Forest - and now the Pike property – sit so close to the water intake pipe and pump station where the Durham-UNH water system withdraws water to service the town and university community with drinking water.

“This isn’t just any old 36 acres," says Duane Hyde, SELT’s Land Conservation Director. “The adage of ‘dilution is the solution to pollution’ does not work in such proximity to a drinking water intake. Conserving this land is very important to keeping a clean water source available to the Town and University.”

Conservation almost always requires strong partnerships and SELT not only worked closely with the Town of Durham to conserve the Pike property, but also several state and federal funding sources which included the State of New Hampshire’s Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund, the State’s Aquatic Resource Mitigation Fund Program, the US Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program, and the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership.