Even as New Hampshire's population soars and real estate developers gobble up more and more land, the task of conserving the state's natural resources just got a little more difficult.

The state's Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (LCHIP) was one of the biggest losers in the new biennial budget passed by state lawmakers last week, with the conservation program receiving $1.5 million over the next two years, a far cry from the $10 million level Gov. John Lynch proposed to restore it in February.

"It's certainly going to cut down on what we can accomplish," says Rachel Rouillard, executive director of LCHIP.
Rouillard estimates that of the 230 proposed conservation projects that have been sent to LCHIP this year, the budget can fund about five over the next two years.

The drastic cut in funding also sends a negative message to potential private investors and sources of federal funding, according to Rouillard. For every $1 contributed to a project by LCHIP, another $6 comes from other federal and private sources. Since 2000, LCHIP has helped preserve more than 200,000 acres of land in 90 communities in the state.

"It's a little bit of state money for a lot of private investment," she says. "It also sends message to other funders that New Hampshire cares about its state and is doing something proactive about it."
And, like private investors, the federal government will not put funds into a project unless there's a commitment from the state, according to Rouillard.

"They say 'If the state isn't putting its money where its mouth is, why should we do it?'"
Although the cuts are deep, Rouillard says they are not a surprise. LCHIP's funding went from $13 million in the 2002-2003 fiscal year to $1.5 million in 2004-2005.

"It's not a partisan issue, but clearly it's a policy issue and clearly the leadership in the House and Senate just have not prioritized this," Rouillard says.

But there are some in the Statehouse pulling for LCHIP. During budget negotiations, members of the House proposed $5 million for LCHIP instead of the governor's $10 million; however, the Senate's budget called for $1.5 million. Meanwhile, LCHIP has four members of the state legislature on its board of directors. Rep. Judith Spang (D-Durham) is one of those members.

"It's already down to a point where (LCHIP) can hardly be called a state program," says Spang. "Most of money comes from bonds passed by towns and private landowners. We're just talking the very tip of tail of the dog and the state is balking at even providing that. It's very mean spirited."
While Spang says the program has "very broad, bipartisan support," she thinks the decision to give LCHIP the shaft could be political.

"There are many, many ways of cutting this pie and a deliberate choice was made to axe LCHIP much more than was necessary to balance that budget," she says. "When you see one program that is getting hit to the tune of 86 percent of their money, you know there is something political going on."

Spang says that during budget talks, some lawmakers pointed out that the state has access to $3.5 million in conservation funds through the federal Department of Transportation. However, she notes that funding can only be used for preserving land near highway projects and cannot be used statewide.
Conservation projects on the Seacoast will be affected by the cut. One such effort is the Piscassic Greenway project, a conservation project headed up by the Rockingham Land Trust in partnership with the Trust for Public Land.

"When we did the original analysis, we did assume the state would fund LCHIP and this project would be competitive enough ... to receive funding," says Brian Hart, executive director of RLT. "With this scenario ... we're not quite sure what level of funding, if any, we can assume."

The Piscassic Greenway is an effort to save 330 acres of land between Newfields and Newmarket from development. The project has raised $6.3 million of the $8.1 million needed to purchase the land from owner Joseph Falzone. That $6.3 million is made up of money from the town of Newfields, state and federal funding, and contributions from private donors. The amount also includes $2 million approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Once purchased, Hart says the land will connect to another 1,600 acres of preserved land that stretches between Newmarket and Exeter.

"For this region having 2,000 acres of land that's connected and protected is a pretty amazing thing," he says.

The property "provides a lot of benefit to the region," according to Hart. Laced with trails for biking and hiking, the land is also a habitat for many wildlife species and acts as a watershed for Newmarket's surface water supply.

"Helping protect this property will ensure water quality down the stream of Newmarket's surface water," Hart says.

The Piscassic Greenway project began in October 2004. Hart says the groups' hard deadline for raising the remaining $1.75 million is April 2006, though the money will have to be in place a few months before that in order to finalize the project's details.

"It's only going to happen with support from lots of people and gifts very small and very large," he says. "It's eight months before it's either protected or developed, so we have a pretty tight time frame."

Hart says the RLT plans to apply for a grant when LCHIP opens up a grant request round this fall. Though he says it's hard to say if the lack of LCHIP money will jeopardize the project, the funding cut "shows the state is ignoring the natural resource base that made this state."

There was some good news last week, however, when Senator Judd Gregg announced the Senate Finance Committee earmarked $9.5 million for conservation projects in the Seacoast, including the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership and the Winnicut River Headwaters Project in North Hampton.
Other conservation groups haven't bothered to apply grants because of the uncertain nature of LCHIP's funding.

Danna Truslow, executive director of the Seacoast Land Trust, says her organization applied for two LCHIP grants in 2003 but didn't make the cut. Since then, the SLT hasn't applied for any grants because of the "tenuous nature of LCHIP."

"After that initial try, we didn't reapply because funding had basically disappeared at that point," she says.

None of the SLT's current projects have received LCHIP money, instead relying on local, federal and private funds "that, luckily, we were able to put together. And it took several years to be able to do that," Truslow says.

With so many projects vying for the grant money, she says there's a "huge amount of competition."
"Demand is really, really, really, really, high," she says. "I think LCHIP has been able to demonstrate there's a huge demand for this kind of funding."

As funding decreases and competition grows, Truslow believes that conservation groups will start relying more on funding from individual towns. And as land values in the state increase, funding conservation efforts will become more complicated.

"(LCHIP) helps to leverage other funding that's available. If LCHIP can provide 25 percent of the cost of a project, you can use the other funding to make up the difference. Without that leveraging, it's really difficult to get the project done," she says.