The Concord Pine Barrens and Ossipee Pine Barrens are New
Hampshire's last remaining pitch pine/scrub oak barrens, a globally
rare natural community that is the target of a rangewide
conservation program coordinated by The Nature Conservancy. The pine
barrens of Concord and Ossipee are the New Hampshire Field Office's
two highest-priority protection sites.
Both provide habitat for a diverse array of rare Lepidoptera
(moth and butterfly) species. These moths and butterflies fall into
two habitat groups according to host- and food-plants: 1) the
grassy-opening guild and 2) the woodland guild. The Concord site
contains numerous species of the grassy-opening guild, species that
have never been known to occur in Ossipee. Conversely, the Ossipee
site has many rare moths of the woodland guild that are either
absent from or in precipitous decline at the Concord site.
The woodlands of the Concord Pine Barrens have been so fragmented
and isolated by development that they can no longer support
populations of woodland moths and butterflies. The Ossipee Pine
Barrens. at 800+ ha (2,000+) acres, still contain enough contiguous
pitch pine/scrub oak woodland to support healthy populations of
these species.
The New Hampshire Field Office's resources are insufficient to
both restore the degraded woodlands of the Concord site and protect
sufficient Lepidoptera habitat at the Ossipee site. We have decided,
instead, to use resources in a complementary fashion by focusing on
preservation of grassy-opening-guild Lepidoptera in Concord and
woodland-guild in Ossipee.
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