FRANCESTOWN — The town is enrolling in a step-by-step process to develop a conservation plan for the future, with the help of Monadnock Community Conservation Partnership.

The Conservation Commission has scheduled a series of public seminars with the goal of garnering the public’s help in identifying and protecting important areas of wildlife habitat, agriculture and water resources.

Peter Throop is the project director for Community Conservation, a nonprofit based in Keene. It is the only land trust dedicated exclusively to the 35 towns of the Monadnock region.

Throop is in charge of assisting any town in the area that is interested in developing a community action plan, which helps towns in identify areas in need of conservation. He has been working with Betsy Hardwick, chair of the Conservation Commission, to lead the project in Francestown.

As part of the effort to inform the public, Francestown Conservation Commission has scheduled three community sessions. During a Master Plan forum held in 2004, residents participated in a survey that showed that rural character was one of the most important things to preserve, so as well as identifying critical natural resources the seminars are also meant to help identify cultural resources or conservation areas that are important to the town and residents, according to Hardwick.

In order to better understand what rural character means to residents, Land Use Planning Surveys were distributed to the residents who attended the first seminar on Nov. 30. The survey had questions pertaining to the definition of rural character and asked participants to identify the types of development and land use that contribute or detract from Francestown’s rural character. Also, participants were asked to mark on a map the community areas that they felt were in the most need of conservation or protection.

“From that, we will develop a plan to guide the town moving forward with natural resource protection through conservation projects and zoning changes, as well as in educational outreach and promoting management practices to conserve wildlife habitat and other natural resources,” said Hardwick.

The first seminar pertained to wildlife and habitat. The presentation included speakers Lindsay Webb from N.H. Fish and Game and Amanda Stone from University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, and was attended by about 35 people, according to Hardwick.

Stone, a land and water conservation specialist, said the needs of individual communities involved in these projects differ. “It’s not a cookie-cutter approach,” said Stone. Her main role in the seminar was to help community members with prioritizing and identifying the qualities that are important in farmland, animal habitat and water resources. This helps community members know what to look for when marking areas they feel need to be preserved.

According to Webb, residents starting a community conservation project are always interested in maps of currently protected areas. “Everyone looks to see where their house is or where their favorite hiking area or fishing area is. It just gets them talking,” said Webb.

“All that local knowledge is really great, and when I bring in the maps that’s the science behind it. It supports what they’ve always felt in their heart and helps bolster their argument for preservation of wildlife habitat. It’s important to them, but also important to the community as well.”

Two further seminars are planned, one scheduled tentatively for Feb. 8 that cover local agriculture, and a third on a date to be decided will focus on the water resources. According to Hardwick, both events will have speakers, but none are engaged as of yet. Board members mentioned that they would like to invite as many local farmers to the seminar on agriculture as they could find.

“We’re just expanding into the community participation part of the project,” said Hardwick. “We hope to have broad community participation and will work toward that goal.”

“The idea is to gather as much participation in the community as we can,” said Throop.

Throop said that the idea is not to protect the town as a whole, but to identify and protect places that are important to the community. This also helps to identify areas that are good for development. According to Throop, these assessments help in “balancing the community’s needs for growth and development while protecting the important areas.”

The total cost of this conservation effort is estimated to be about $10,000, according to Hardwick. Francestown has already been awarded a $4,999 conservation grant to help offset the cost. The grant comes from the State Conservation Committee’s Conservation Grant Program, which is funded by the purchase of special conservation license plates, or “Moose Plates.”

“It’s a grant to the town of Francestown for the express purpose of participating in this plan,” said Throop. “A lot of our work is grant-funded. Towns do make a contribution, but we try to match funds with grants as much as possible.”

According to Throop, in order to include conservation goals in the town Master Plan, the work group will first have to pull the data gathered at the seminars together, draw conclusions and recommendations, and gather community reactions before it is finalized. It will then be brought before the Planning Board for a public hearing.

According to Throop, the timeline for finishing this process will be the end of summer or early fall of 2012. “It all depends on how it evolves,” said Throop. “We try to get through these projects in a year’s time. We don’t want to drag it out, but we want to make sure there’s an ample opportunity for people to participate, that’s really the most important part of this.”

More information about creating a community action plan, as well as stories of community successes with action plans similar to the one being implemented by Francestown are available at www.takingactionforwildlife.com, a collaborative effort between N.H. Fish and Game and UNH Cooperative Extension.

This article appears in the Dec. 15, 2011, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.