Across Southern New Hampshire, towns have been looking for ways to slow development as thousands of people each year chose the Granite State as home.
Earlier this month, Milford officials approved a year's moratorium on permits for large subdivisions.
And last week, residents in Hollis voted to spend millions of dollars to buy an old orchard to protect it from developers.
State conservation groups say these are only hints of what's to come for the region.
New Hampshire Public Radio correspondent Avishay Artsy filed this report.
A special Town Meeting in Hollis last week drew a particularly large crowd.
And the overwhelming majority of those attending voted to approve the purchase of two parcels of land adding up to about 260 acres.
Supporters of the deal feared the land would be developed if the town didn't snap it up first.
It was the town's largest land purchase since it started buying land three years ago.
Mike Harris is the chairman of the Hollis Budget Committee.
T27, 3:00 “Right now we have just under 20 percent of the land protected, and I think the intent is to bring that up to about 25 percent. The chart that I showed at the town meeting shows us continuing to buy land like this for 10 or 15 years into the future.”
Hollis isn't following this conservation path alone.
Many other communities are taking the same route.
Since 2001, voters in 61 towns have approved funding requests for land conservation.
And those towns have either spent or set aside a total of 102 million dollars toward those efforts.
T32, 4:35 “Towns are realizing they’re going to be complete overrun with new people, and the whole town being developed from wall to wall unless they do something right now to conserve the things that make their town special.”
That’s Dijit Taylor, director of the statewide Center for Land Conservation Assistance.
She says Hollis is ahead of the game in buying land to be preserved.
T32, 6:00 “In 2001, three towns passed bonds for open space acquisition… and Hollis was one of those towns.”
New Hampshire has been the fastest-growing state in New England for four straight decades.
And if current trends continue as predicted, Southern New Hampshire will become home to more than 150,000 new residents over the next 20 years.
That's one and a half times the current population of Manchester.
T31, 5:20 “We need to be thinking about those resources that contribute to our tourism economy, our timber economy… the real New Hampshire advantage, the things that bring people here, that support our state; we need to be investing in those things at the same time that we’re growing.”
That’s Rachel Rouillard, the executive director of the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or LCHIP.
Rouillard says that some cities, like Manchester, it's too late.
It's already built out ….there’s really no more room for new development.
She predicts that the widening of Interstate 93 and a proposed commuter rail from Lowell will only bring in more new residents.
And as town officials discuss ways to protect their land, they often point at developers as the enemy.
But Rouillard says that’s unfair.
T31, 15:30 “It’s not up to them to do municipal planning… It’s up to the communities to be saying, ‘Look, this land is suitable for development, but this land we really need to conserve.”
Jack Farrell is a Dover-based developer.
He says that as businessmen, developers will take the path of least resistance to purchasing land.
If towns want to keep land away from developers, he says, they should do it a different way… by changing their zoning laws.
“The towns simply can’t afford to buy all the land. What the towns have to do for the land that the buy is pick the pieces that are at the top of the list, and use their zoning ordinance to do the work for the bulk of the land, and try to guide development the way they want, rather than hoping that they can stop it all, or buy it all.”
But in addition to protecting a town from development, another reason conservation efforts are on the rise is that statewide property values have skyrocketed.
According to the state Department of Revenue Administration, land values have increased by 95 percent in the past six years.
So town's may be compelled to buy land today, so they don't have to pay more tomorrow.
The issue will likely come up in Hollis again this coming March.…when voters will decide how much if any to spend on conserving land.
For NHPR News, this is Avishay Artsy.
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