BY DAVE CHOATE
Taking care of the vast land in a river’s watershed is a task that requires a lot of time and effort. With help from landowners, town officials and their corps volunteers, the 37-year-old Piscataquog Watershed Association manages just fine.
Executive director Margaret Watkins said the association’s 100 volunteers help the PWA in many ways, including working with the owners of the more than 2,200 acres of protected land the association holds conservation easements on and helping manage the 695 acres the association owns. The land in the watershed covers 11 towns in total, including Goffstown, New Boston, Dunbarton and Weare.
“We are very grateful to and dependent on our volunteers,” Watkins said. “We couldn’t do nearly the amount of work we do without them.”
The association’s volunteers are broken into different committees, each of them charged with a different facet of the watershed. Examples include a committee dedicated to controlling invasive plant species such as purple loosestrife on the banks of the river and a wildlife tracking program which identifies key habitats in the area.
David Nieman is one of the volunteers from the open space committee, which works with landowners to scout out possible conservation areas. He said the group represents one of the first steps in the easement process.
Once land has been scouted and placed under the protection of the PWA, the volunteer committees will do work to maintain it about once a year. Nieman said the PWA works hard to keep the river and its watershed healthy.
“The PWA was born with the intention of safeguarding the river and the water quality, and protect some of the headwater areas,” Nieman said. “The open space committee reviews potential conservation properties to protect and preserve.”
He noted that Goffstown’s location downstream from the river means it benefits preserving the headwater areas.
The group also holds educational events for families and communities and works closely with the all-volunteer conservation groups in the 11 towns of the watershed.
Nieman said for he and other members of the association, there are rewards both immediate and long term in keeping the watershed protected.
“Just knowing that there’s going to be open spaces and natural areas that people can enjoy in the future is a reward. There are a lot of immediate rewards if you enjoy being outdoors, because it gets you to places where you’ve never been before and that you’d never know were there,” he said.
Watkins said volunteers come to the PWA for a variety of reasons.
“Some people volunteer because they like to be of service. Some are learning while they’re doing, and it can be very rewarding from an education standpoint,” he said. “For a lot of volunteers, it’s the opportunity to be of service to a cause they personally believe in.”