Our Mission, History, and Board

Our Mission

The mission of Bow Open Spaces Inc is to acquire, conserve, manage and dispose of land and interest in land within the Town of Bow in order to preserve and protect wildlife habitat, farm land, forests, wetlands and other lands of conservation value and the natural scenic, recreational, ecological and productive features of such land for the benefit of the citizens of Bow and the State of New Hampshire.

Our History

Bow Open Spaces was formed on March 19, 1997 by a group of Town residents. These residents were concerned about how easy it was to take land classified as town forest, and managed by the Bow Conservation Commission, out of town forest classification and develop the property. For example, the Bow High School property was once a town forest. Before the high school was built, the Town was able to take the land out of town forest by a simple majority vote and develop the property.

As a result of the high school construction, the Town was required by the State of New Hampshire to permanently protect some of its property from development in order to offset the impact of the high school on the surrounding land. Consequently, NH Fish & Game was given a permanent conservation easement on some of Bow’s land to comply with the State. This easement took local control of the property away from town residents, which was worrisome to the group watching these changes taking place. Bow Open Spaces was born with the help of these citizens so that future conservation easements would be held by an organization controlled by the Town’s residents.

The organization was formalized, and officers were elected. Committee members and membership began to grow. Awareness of the organization began to grow as well. It was important to stress to the Town and prospective members that the articles of agreement of Bow Open Spaces required, and continues to require, that all board members be residents of the Town of Bow.

During the next few years, over a thousand acres of Town land was permanently protected through conservation easements granted to Bow Open Spaces. The Bow Conservation Commission and Bow Open Spaces worked hard in the late 1990s to secure the purchase of Nottingcook Forest.

Today, Bow Open Spaces continues its efforts to secure more conservation easements and keep Bow full of open space!

Our Board of Directors, 2023-24

President: Harry C. Hadaway, Jr

Vice President: Tom O’Donovan
Past President: Bob Lux
Secretary: Bob Lux
Treasurer: Frank Boucher
Membership Director: Robert Dawkins
Trails Director: Marc Ferland
Stewardship Director: Eric Thum
Public Relations Director: Martin Murray
Land Conservation: Bob Dawkins

Meetings of the Board are open to all and are generally held the first Tuesday of the month (September – June) at 6:30 p.m. at the Baker Free Library. Please join us!