Glover Farm in northern New Hampshire has been owned and loved by generations of the Glover family since the early 1900s. In 2021, the Glovers approached the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (NH FG) and The Conservation Fund to memorialize their family’s legacy and preserve this special landscape. The Glover Farm Wildlife Management Area (WMA) is now permanently conserved — protecting outstanding wildlife, water and upland resources on its roughly 800 acres while providing the public with recreational opportunities such as hunting and wildlife watching.

Our Role

Several generations of Glovers were in agreement that it was time to find a new steward for their family’s land, and they faced the choice between selling for development and conserving it for the public good. Through a vote of 13 trustees, the Glover family chose conservation — and agreed to work with NH FG to establish a new WMA to ensure permanent public access and wildlife habitat protection on their property.   

Because the NH FG did not have the funding needed to purchase the land outright, the agency requested our assistance to pre-acquire the property. The family chose to work with TCF and NH FG to ensure that their land — which evoked for them fond memories of hunting, fishing, vegetable farming and raising livestock — will never be built upon or subdivided. We were able to purchase the property in December 2022, allowing time for permanent conservation solutions to be implemented. In October 2023 the property was transferred to the state and established as the Glover Farm Wildlife Management Area.

Along with private donations acquired by TCF, the $1.2-million project was funded through various sources, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Restoration Grant Program, the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, and the Randolph Area Conservation Opportunity Fund. Additionally, we leveraged our Revolving Fund — which uses bridge capital to protect large ecologically and economically important forestlands from subdivision and fragmentation — allowing time for permanent conservation solutions to be implemented.

Watch the video below to learn more about the Glover family’s legacy and the unique partnership that made this significant conservation effort possible.

Why This Project Matters

The Glover Farm WMA secures a variety of habitats, including wetlands and diverse forest types, which, by remaining unfragmented, will continue to provide tremendous benefits to local wildlife populations. Many of these habitats were carefully cultivated and stewarded by the Glover family for generations in order to protect wildlife. Permanent public access to this property supports a wide array of outdoor recreational activities important to the local community.  

The property’s mature fields, orchards and shrublands support abundant upland game bird and snowshoe hare populations, as well as a range of pollinators and species of greatest conservation need, including the American kestrel and bobolink. The acreage also includes a cedar wetland — a habitat type that has largely disappeared in the region over the last 40 years — which provides safe winter habitat for deer, and woodlands that have the potential to support American martens and lynx.

Learn More

• News: “Fish and Game Acquires New Wildlife Management Area in Coos County”