The land in the Schoodac Brook watershed in Warner and Webster is iconic New Hampshire. There are red maple floodplain forests, the pumpkin patches and hay fields of a farm that has been in the same family for generations, and active timber harvests. There are meadows of wildflowers and vernal pools critical to salamander and turtle species.

As of this month, 440 more acres in the watershed owned by the Courser family have been conserved in perpetuity through a partnership with the Nature Conservancy and the Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust. They make up the third phase of a plan that has protected 895 acres so far and could protect 343 more.

The Courser family this month signed a conservation easement on three parcels. They maintain ownership of the land and the right to farm it and harvest timber, but they give up their right to develop it.

The two parcels in Warner, totaling 331 acres, abut 138 acres of farmland protected with an easement two years ago. The third is a 109-acre parcel in Webster, abutting the Knights Meadow Marsh and a large stretch of state-owned land.

The project cost $534,000. The money was raised through grants, private donations and by the towns. Portions of the Schoodac Brook run through all three parcels, as do snowmobile trails.

Rebecca Courser, one of four siblings who make up the family trust, said she and her brothers have watched other family farms be sold and developed when older generations die.

"My brothers and I work well together, and we make decisions by consensus," she said. "We feel like we're trying to take a long-term view of this land and what it should be utilized for. Hopefully, it's going to stay within the family."

On the Schoodac Road farm, the Coursers raise sweet corn, pumpkins, squash and hay. They lumber cordwood and saw logs, make maple sugar and raise and train oxen. They've owned the farm for 104 years, Courser said. Some parcels have been in the family for as long as 150 years.

The Coursers "have the kind of relationship with their land that's becoming less and less common in New Hampshire," said Mark Zankel, deputy state director for The Nature Conservancy. "What comes with that relationship is a really strong stewardship ethic."

The Nature Conservancy approached the Coursers in 2002, asking if they would be interested in selling a conservation easement. The organization had put together a science-based plan for conserving the Schoodac watershed because of its importance for wildlife.

Zankel said more than 100 species of migratory birds have been spotted there. Various kinds of wetland, including wet meadows and scrub-shrub swamps made up of alders and dogwoods, provide important habitat for various species.

Three of what the state Wildlife Action Plan calls "species of concern" live in the area. Zankel wouldn't name them, citing concern over human interference.

Six years ago, the family wasn't ready for an easement, Courser said. But after the death of the siblings' mother, Margaret Courser, in 2004, they were deciding how to handle their family's estate. The federal government gives landowners the option of donating a conservation easement to lower or even avoid paying estate tax.

The family would have had to sell some of its land to pay what it owed in estate tax, Courser said. Instead, they contacted the Nature Conservancy and Ausbon Sargent. They donated a conservation easement on a 317-acre parcel that straddles the Warner-Webster town line.

Courser said they saw easements as a way of ensuring that their family can continue to manage the land or, at least, guarantee that it would remain as farm and forest.

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