Francestown, NH – Northeast Wilderness Trust purchased 130 acres near Campbell Hill Road in Francestown last week, creating the new Jack & Margaret Hoffman Wilderness Sanctuary. The Sanctuary protects wetlands and forest, including the summit and southerly slopes of Campbell Hill, as forever-wild.
“We couldn’t be prouder to safeguard this beautiful ecosystem as wilderness,” said Jon Leibowitz, Executive Director of the Northeast Wilderness Trust. “As forever-wild, this land will never be logged and it joins a growing number of wildlands in southern New Hampshire—to the benefit of wildlife and people.”
The land hosts two large beaver ponds that feed into Brennan Brook, part of the Merrimac River Watershed. There are at least four active vernal pools, where amphibians and insects breed in the spring. Stone walls and cellar holes throughout the Sanctuary indicate that the young forest was once farmland.
Northeast Wilderness Trust purchased the property from the children of the late John L. (Jack) and Margaret Hoffman. The siblings wanted to protect the land as a safe and peaceful home for wildlife in their parents’ memory. They sold the land at a generous, bargain-sale price to the Wilderness Trust last week.