In December 2024, in partnership with with Atira Conservation, Northeast Wilderness Trust established Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve, a 6,730-acre property in Riley Township, Maine. Situated along the Maine-New Hampshire border, Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve encompasses several peaks in the Mahoosuc Range, as well as four major waterways and various smaller brooks and streams. Together, these diverse landscape features provide critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, while strengthening an important wildlife corridor.

More than 2,000 vertical feet separate the highest and lowest points at Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve. Between these high and low points are a wide range of natural community types.

The vast forests found here include 200 acres of subalpine fir forest and 82 acres of spruce-pine woodland. A large area of higher elevation forests here are mapped as habitat for Bicknell’s thrush, a species of special concern in Maine, while other areas of the property are mapped as habitat for peregrine falcons, an endangered state species that require cliffs for nesting. Meanwhile, many miles of headwater streams on the property are known to provide exceptional brook trout habitat, cited by locals as among the best anywhere in the region. Numerous other species — thrushes, vireos, hawks, warblers, moose, fishers, bobcats and more — breed in or migrate through the region’s northern hardwood forests. These creatures benefit not only from conservation of Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve, but also from its location in a well-connected network of nearby conservation lands.

North of the Preserve is the state of Maine’s Mahoosuc Ecological Reserve, which in turn borders Northeast Wilderness Trust’s 6,045-acre Grafton Forest Wilderness Preserve. To the southwest is the White Mountain National Forest.

Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve now serves as a vital link within a network of more than 27,000 acres of conservation land, all within a Tier 1 matrix forest block — exactly the scale of unbroken habitat areas needed for biodiversity resilience in the face of climate change. Because this property is conserved as forever-wild, it is permanently protected from logging, creating the ideal conditions for the forest to eventually attain old-growth characteristics. As the forest here grows older and wilder, a greater number and diversity of species will find ideal habitat conditions to live and thrive.

Mountain Brooks Wilderness Preserve is the single largest transaction completed in Northeast Wilderness Trust’s history. At 6,730 acres, this landscape-scale property is now a permanently-protected stronghold for wild nature to evolve and flourish in the centuries to come.

• Property Cost: $6.6 million
• Atira Conservation Funding: $33,000