New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissions Annual Meeting Presenters

Keynote Address by Richard Ober,

President and Chief Executive Officer, NH Charitable Foundation

Dick Ober leads the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the largest private provider of nonprofit grants and student aid in northern New England. The Foundation manages nearly $500 million of charitable funds donated by hundreds of families and individuals, and awards some 2,500 grants and scholarships totaling $30 million annually.Ober has 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, civic affairs and communications and has served on numerous nonprofit and public boards.Before coming to the Foundation he was executive director of the Monadnock Conservancy and vice president of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. Ober is a widely published author and journalist and lectures throughout New England and beyond.His community-focused work has been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State of New Hampshire, and Plymouth State University among others. In 2010, he was selected as one of the state’s most influential people by Business New Hampshire Magazine.

Jay Aube

Jay has been with the DES Shoreland Program since March 2008. He has a background in environmental biology and chemistry. Prior to working for DES, he was a high school science teacher.

The Honorable Jane Beaulieu

Jane Beaulieu has served three terms as a State Representative (District 17 Manchester) where she also served as Vice Chair of Environment & Agriculture Committee. In addition to her tireless efforts on behalf of conservation issues Jane is a successful entrepreneur. She is the founder of Not So Plain Jane’s, one of the largest day spas in NH, and she currently owns and manages Manchester’s Mill Town Market on Elm Street. She serves as chair of the Friends of the Valley Cemetery, a board member of the NH Lakes Association, member of the Preservation Committee of the Manchester Historic Association. Jane is also a former member of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture Advisory Board, and member of the NH Committee to Study Exotic Invasive Weeds and Species. Jane was an active fundraiser for the purchase of Milfoil removal equipment for the protection of NH’s lakes. Jane has served for many years on the Manchester Conservation Commission; she currently serves as chair.

Karen Bennett

Karen Bennett joined UNH Cooperative Extension in 1979. She worked in Hillsborough and later in Merrimack County as a County Forester helping people care for their forestland. She shared information about forest and wildlife management, current use taxation, selling timber, growing Christmas trees, caring for shade trees, identifying trees, trail and road layout, forest ecology, soils and many other topics of concern to forest owners. She assumed her Extension Specialist role in April 1996 where she specializes in private forestlands management providing education to landowners, land managers, conservation volunteers, and public decision makers with an emphasis on professional development for foresters. Karen has also served as project manager and editor for the new edition ofGood Forestry in the Granite State: Recommended Voluntary Forest Management Practices for New Hampshire.

Emily Brunkhurst

Emily Brunkhurst isa wildlife biologist with NH Fish and Game's Nongame and Endangered Species program. She provides technical assistance to agencies, land trusts, towns, landowners and other efforts on wildlife habitat protection and management, using wildlife habitat data to identify important natural resource areas and encouraging people to use a range of tools to protect and manage them. She is also responsible for monitoring several of the state endangered and threatened and other at-risk species. Emily has a Masters degree in environmental science and years of experience managing lands, providing natural history information to the public, and working on local and regional open space plans.

Emma Carcagno

Emma is a wildlife biologist with UNH Cooperative Extension. She works with public and private landowners to plan and implement wildlife habitat management projects, especially those beneftting threatened and endangered wildlife such as the New England cottontail rabbit.

Amanda Costello

Amanda Costello is the District Manager of the Cheshire County Conservation District where she has been since 2007. She graduated from Antioch University New England with a M.S. in Environmental Studies and a focus in Community Education. She currently sits on the Hannah Grimes Center Board, Monadnock Sustainability Network Board, and chairs the Monadnock Localvores. Amanda has great interest in supporting the region’s working landscape for the value that it contributes to the local economy, the good stewardship it provides for our local environment, and the benefits it brings to our rural communities.

Malin Ely Clyde

Malin works for UNH Cooperative Extension doing wildlife education work with Coverts Project volunteers and private landowners. She's also a member of the Durham Conservation Commission, and recently helped start a Land Stewardship Subcommittee of the Commission.

Paul Dionne

Paul Dionne is the President of the NHACC Board of Directors and is a long-time member of the Derry CC. Paul is also a former board member of the Southeast Land Trust.

Rick Ellsmore

State Conservationist – USDA-NRCS, New Hampshire

Rick has been the New Hampshire State Conservationist with NRCS since June 2010. He began his career with SCS/NRCS in 1985 as a Student Trainee Soil Conservationist in Northern Maine. He has held many other positions with the agency including District Conservationist, State Resource Conservationist, and Assistant State Conservationist in Maine, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Rick has also served on several details to the NRCS National Headquarters Office in Washington DC to assist with the 2008 Farm Bill, writing the National EQIP Conservation Innovative Grants Manual, and as a member of the National Efficiency Team.

Rick grew up in Eastern Maine and graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Forestry. His personal interests include coaching and playing sports, hiking, travel, reading, and the outdoors. Rick resides in Nottingham with his wife and two daughters.

Edna Feighner

Historical Archaeologist, Review & Compliance Coordinator, NH Division of Historical Resources

Edna Feighner joined the DHR staff in June 2001 as Review and Compliance Coordinator and Historical Archaeologist. Edna brings the Division a wealth of experience garnered from an extensive career in Cultural Resources Management which she applies to state and federal undertakings that come to the Division of Historical Resources for review and compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. She has a long tenure in northeastern archaeology (over 30 years), having done fieldwork in all the New England states and New York as well as Kenya and Germany. Some of her major projects have included work on the Big Dig in Boston, excavations at the Boylston Street Fish Weir in Boston and excavation of a 17th century schooner found on Water Street in Manhattan’s financial district, as well as cultural resource compliance oversight for the largest natural gas pipeline constructed in New England.

Edna has also worked on a wide variety of prehistoric, historic and contact period sites in the northeast and has established an expertise in the analysis of faunal remains, historic period ceramics and Native American pottery. Her Master’s research at the University of Massachusetts-Boston focused on a the ceramic analysis of materials recovered from Malaga Island, a 19th century fishing village located on an island off the coast of Maine.

In addition to her duties in review and compliance, Edna also leads summer workshops through the New Hampshire SCRAP Program and participates in the Project Archaeology program (a National program developed to teach teachers how to teach archaeology in our public schools).

Gene Harrington

Gene Harrington has a BS in Wildlife Biology and an MS in Entomology and is manager and part owner of Nashua Farmers Exchange. In the past he served on the Derry CC and Planning Board, and the Londonderry Planning Board. Gene is a member of the NHACC Board of Directors and a long-time member and former chairman of Londonderry Conservation Commission.

Brian Hotz

Brian is Senior Director of Strategic Projects/Land Protection for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, where he has worked since 1998. Brian has a Master’s of Science from the University of Wisconsin's Land Resources Program. He previously worked for the Wisconsin Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and was the Executive Director of Gathering Waters, Inc., Wisconsin's education and technical assistance center for land trusts. His primary responsibility for the Forest Society is to implement land conservation efforts, including the Quabbin-to-Cardigan Conservation Initiative and the Ashuelot River Land Conservation Plan.

Tom Howard

Tom Howard is the owner-broker of New Hampshire Conservation Real Estate, a business that focuses upon transactions involving properties that presently have conservation protections in place or that include valuable natural resource components, which make the land important to conserve.

With education and experience in the parks and recreation, real estate and land conservation fields, Tom has developed a broad perspective and an equally diverse skill set to handle the complexities involved with conservation transactions.

Pam Hunt

Pam Hunt has been interested in birds since the tender age of 12, when an uncle took her to Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge in NJ. She went on to earn a B.S. in biology from Cornell University, M.A. in zoology from the University of Montana, and a Ph.D. from Dartmouth College in 1995. Pam came to NH Audubon in 2000 after five years as adjunct faculty at Colby-Sawyer College in New London. In her current position as Avian Conservation Biologist, she works closely with NH Fish and Game to coordinate and prioritize bird research and monitoring in the state, and most recently authored NH's "State of the Birds" report. Specific areas of interest include habitat use by early successional birds, particularly Whip-poor-wills, and the effects of events outside the breeding season on long-distance migrants. Pam also coordinates the NH Dragonfly Survey.

George S. Lamprey

George is owner and founder of Lamprey Appraisals in Meredith, New Hampshire. Since 1982 he has provided residential, land, conservation easement, commercial and industrial appraisal services for some of New Hampshire’s most respected organizations, to include conservation groups, municipal governments, legal firms and lending institutions. He is one of the state’s most experienced conservation easement appraisers, having completed more than 150 easement appraisals in the last 20 years.

A graduate of UNH and Harvard University, Mr. Lamprey holds numerous professional designations in the appraisal field, and has served as a member and office holder of leading regional, state and national real estate associations. In the New Hampshire State Legislature he served on the Resource, Recreation and Development Committee and as vice chair of the Municipal and County Government Committee.

A lifelong resident of New Hampshire, he is an avid skier, hiker and ice hockey enthusiast.

Kitty Lane

Katharine Lane is a biologist at Eastern Analytical Inc., a long-time member of Bow Conservation Commission, and an NHACC director. In her spare time, she raises llamas and is a volunteer speaker for the Heifer Project with experience in taking a llama in a Boston elevator en route to a talk.

Jeffry N. Littleton

Jeffry Littleton is an ecologist with Moosewood Ecological LLC, having more than 18 years of experience inecological studiesand environmental education. He specializes in conservation and land management planning on multiple scales for a wide range of entities, including private landowners,federal and stateagencies, municipalities,and non-profit organizations. He employs a systems approach to understanding the spatial dynamics of the environment, blending conservation biology with the ecology of landscapes, and he uses a GIS to analyze natural resources to help guide conservation and restoration planning efforts. Jeffry serves on the Pisgah State Park Technical Team, is treasurer of the Monadnock Sustainability Network, and chairs the Monadnock Farm and Community Connection Agricultural Inventory Committee. In addition, he serves as adjunct faculty at Antioch University where he provides course instruction on community ecology and inventory techniques for wildlife and their habitats, as well as vegetation and natural communities.

Deb Loiselle

Deb Loiselle is the River Restoration Coordinator for the NH Deapartment of Environmental Services' Dam Bureau. She has been employed at NHDES for over 6years and her responsibilities include managing the Dam Removal and River Restoration Program for the State of New Hampshire. Prior to working at NHDES, she worked at the NH Department of Transportation for 12 years as an Environmental Manager and also managed the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program for the Department.

Richard Lutz

Richard is the Executive Director of the New Hampshire Association of Conservation Districts. He received a bachelor degree from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Wildlife Management and a Master of Occupational Education from the University of New Hampshire. He has been an Agriculture and Natural Resources Teacher in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts for 36 years. Currently he is also a Trade Adjustment Act Business Planning Consultant for Lobstermen.

Amy Manzelli

Ms. Manzelli is a member of Baldwin & Callen, PLLC. She brings to the firm an extraordinary depth and breadth of experience. Before joining the firm, she successfully served clients for over six years at one of New Hampshire’s largest law firms. She guides green developers through all phases of projects, especially permitting of innovative and low-impact techniques. She also assists those who oppose or wish to obtain modifications to projects of others. Ms. Manzelli regularly advocates for clients’ issues at the State House, with lawmakers and with officials of executive agencies. She uses her governmental relations skills to encourage passage, modification, or defeat of proposed laws. Ms. Manzelli holds an advanced degree in environmental law and a juris doctor from one of the country’s top environmental law schools, Vermont Law School. Ms. Manzelli excelled at the University of New Hampshire, where she earned her B.S. in Environmental Conservation (and her B.A. in Spanish). She is now a Distinguished Alumna of the School. Ms. Manzelli appears regularly before all superior courts in New Hampshire, local land use boards, and several administrative agencies. Ms. Manzelli has filed briefs with the New Hampshire Supreme Court and practiced in the federal New Hampshire District Court. Ms. Manzelli is extremely active in the environmental community in New Hampshire. Governor Lynch recently appointed her as a Commissioner to the 15-member Water Sustainability Commission. The appointment follows over two years of service on the legislative (HB1295) Stormwater Commission, representing the new Hampshire Business and Industry Association, which honored her with an Above and Beyond Award for her service. Ms. Manzelli makes her home in Pembroke, along with her husband, toddler, and two dogs. She enjoys family time, local food, gardening, edible landscapes, hiking, biking, cooking, and travel.