In October 2025, with support from Atira Conservation, Northeast Wilderness Trust established Spruce Ridge Wilderness Preserve, a 2,020-acre property in the towns of Orford and Lyme, New Hampshire. Home to vast forests, headwater streams and wetlands, Spruce Ridge Wilderness Preserve protects diverse and sensitive habitats adjacent to the Appalachian Trail, the largest intact wildlife corridor in the East.

Spruce Ridge Wilderness Preserve is marked by a high degree of landscape diversity. Within property boundaries are the summit of Bundy Mountain, part of Stonehouse Mountain, and the lower slopes of Mount Cube. The forest on this property is largely intact, ranging from early successional to mature. On higher slopes, a forest community dominated by red spruce creates a unique and sensitive habitat area, complementing the vast northern hardwood forests found at lower elevations on the property. Streams on the property, totaling 1.68 miles in length, all serve as headwaters to the Connecticut River. The largest stream, Jacobs Brook, flows directly into the Connecticut River not far beyond the property boundaries. More than 30 acres of wetlands, including the large Mason Pond, add to the range of aquatic habitats found here.

At both a local and regional scale, this project serves to link large areas of existing conservation land. Spruce Ridge Wilderness Preserve borders almost two miles of the Appalachian Trail, linking it directly with approximately 250,000 acres of federally and state-protected conservation land. This serves as the largest intact wildlife corridor in the East, and the location of the Spruce Ridge property along the Appalachian Trail  made it an extremely high priority for conservation.

There are few such opportunities to protect large, intact forests bordering the Trail — an outcome which both facilitates wildlife movement through this landscape and protects the forested view along the Trail for the benefit of many thousands of hikers each year. If not for this project, this property would not have been conserved and could have faced logging and possible parcelization and development in the future. Now protected as forever-wild, Spruce Ridge Wilderness Preserve will forever remain a core wilderness area facilitating important habitat connectivity for wildlife. In addition to bordering the Appalachian Trail, this property is also located within a 97,000-acre Tier 1 matrix forest block, borders 336 acres of private conservation land, and is only a short distance away from the immense White Mountain National Forest. Successful completion of this project serves to strengthen habitat connectivity within this important landscape, making it easier for wildlife to freely move to find suitable habitat.

• Property Cost: $5,514,443
• Atira Conservation Funding: $30,000