New Hampshire is not for want of trees: It’s the second most-forested state, second only to Maine.

Such an abundant tree canopy may make it easy to think this is what the state has always looked like. But, as Nikki Andrews, the steward of the Sheldrick Forest in Wilton, knows, that’s not the case.

“The forest changes every time you come,” she said on a recent May morning out in the Sheldrick Forest. Andrews was doing a walkthrough of the hike she planned to lead a few days later as part of Wilton’s town-wide celebration of the country’s 250th birthday. Her husband, Dave, and the co-chair of the celebration, Sara Spittel, tagged along.

In the morning sunshine, the early spring leaves glinted pale green. Fresh vegetation was beginning to push its way up through the leaf litter. The Andrewses have been stewards of this forest for over 30 years. Over these decades, Nikki Andrews has developed a deeply personal relationship with the woods.

“You feel like you’re watching your kids grow, and then they outgrow you,” she said.

Andrews wanted to use the hike to show how these small changes have added up to massive evolutions over the centuries.

Plus, Spittel said organizers wanted to showcase the forest’s connection to the Pine Tree Rebellion, a 1772 riot in Weare over British attempts to regulate white-pine logging.

“We may have some of those pine trees that are still here in our forest,” Spittel said. “That all happened even before things were happening in Boston. New Hampshire was rising against the king.”

Only a small grove of these colonial-era pines remains, a cluster of towering red and white pines dubbed “The Valley of Giants.” Andrews planned her route so her group would hike out to them, but only after climbing a path that helped tell the forest’s story over millennia.

Andrews started her story thousands of years ago.

“All this area was shaped by the glaciers,” she said, hiking up a steep pitch along something called a glacial moraine.

“A moraine is a pile of rocks, gravel… pushed up by a glacier either at the end of the glacier or along the sides,” she said.

She explained that underneath the fallen leaves, the soil the glaciers left behind across New Hampshire was rocky.

For thousands of years, Abenaki people stewarded this land. In the 18th century, European colonists arrived in the area from Massachusetts and the Seacoast. Andrews explained that the landscape they encountered was probably heavily wooded, but they quickly transformed it, razing the forest to build homes and start farming. But, as Andrews explained, the colonists had to change their plans pretty soon.

“The soil’s lousy for crops,” she said. “So [the colonists] pulled all those rocks they had pulled out from the field to make walls for the sheep.”

As our hike continued, Andrews reached a dirt path flanked by moss-covered stone walls that were hard to distinguish from the surrounding forest.

Andrews said that this was the remnant of a country road: Roughly 250 years ago, at this exact spot, there would have been foot, horse, and wagon traffic making its way up and down the thoroughfare.

“People would have been taking their products to market and vice versa,” she said.

The road led down to the glacial moraine, to the valley floor, to the grove of quarter-million-year-old pines. In the shadow of the sheer face of the glacial moraine we had just hiked up and over, the grove stood almost hidden, its tall, skinny trees.

Andrews patted the trunk of one of them.

“This was alive when Washington was,” she said. “This was a seedling when Washington was alive.”

But the landscape around this tree, like the country as a whole, changed as the pine grew. People gradually abandoned their farms and fields for better opportunities out west and south, Andrews said.

And the forest came back, roots pushing through abandoned walls and mountain laurel growing on forgotten thoroughfares.

“This land … was just sort of neglected, which was fine,” she said. “Trees don’t need us.”

Eventually, the trees grew back into a proper forest, which made it attractive to loggers. It was lumbered periodically, and for decades, trees grew only to be cut, over and over.

It was not until the 1990s that anyone realized the forest was worth protecting. When a plan for condos on this site was proposed, local conservationists sprang into action. Via a donation, the Nature Conservancy came into possession of the land. For the past 30 years – and for perpetuity into the future – it’s been spared from logging and development.

But Andrews emphasized that even though the forest is now protected, it will continue to change. Standing under one of the old pines, she forecast its future.

“Ten, 20 years, it may fall down, and in another 60 to 100 it will be soil. So these things just last and last in many forms,” she said.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD – The governor announced Friday she signed into law 18 bills passed by the legislature, including ones related to cyanobacteria and Senate Bill 619, establishing procedures for expedited court hearings and disposition of confiscated animals.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, also vetoed three bills including one enabling alternative treatment centers to operate a greenhouse cultivation location.

“I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state. For this reason, I have vetoed SB 468,” she wrote in her veto message.

Also vetoed was HB 1072 relative to employer notice of department of labor investigations.

“While this bill is the product of thoughtful conversations and important considerations, it unnecessarily restricts the Department of Labor’s critical authority to swiftly respond to emergent situations where employers have failed to pay wages to their employees. New Hampshire families depend on timely paychecks, and we cannot delay the Department’s ability to react in those circumstances,” she wrote.

HB 1643, relative to the report of a guardian ad litem, was also vetoed.

“The role of the guardian ad litem is to assist the court in determining the best interests of the child. To that end, under current law guardians ad litem are directed by the court to gather information and, only if specifically requested by the court, make certain recommendations relating to parenting plans, schedules, and decision-making responsibilities. Ultimately, the court is responsible for making determinations relative to a child’s welfare. This bill would strip the authority of the court to request a guardian ad litem provide recommendations for consideration by the judge and limits information available to the court, which could impede its ability to ensure the best interests of a child,” Ayotte wrote.

The three vetoes will be returned to the Senate and the House in the fall to see whether they are sustained or overridden.

Ayotte did sign the following bills which are now law:

HB 656 — Relative to the authority of local school districts to accept federal grants.

HB 1073 — Clarifying when the secretary of state shall complete the registry of New Hampshire decentralized autonomous organizations.

HB 1381 — Extending the time of the party filing period.

HB 1425 — Relative to the development of an online wetlands permit processing system.

HB 1495 — Allowing a reimbursement anticipation note to be used as collateral in certain circumstances.

HB 1549 — Establishing that titles, bills of sale, and identification documents are required only at initial registration or transfer of ownership.

SB 499 — Relative to the membership, duties, and reporting requirements of the traffic safety commission.

SB 500 — Relative to restroom access for certain commercial motor vehicle operators.

SB 505 — Relative to applications for guide licenses and repealing the fee for temporary registration of nonresidents relative to OHRVs.

SB 516 — Relative to certain unclassified positions in the department of health and human services.

SB 595 — Relative to rulemaking for transient non-community water systems.

SB 598 — Establishing the cyanobacteria mitigation loan and grant fund task force.

SB 600 — Requiring the governor to submit and present a quarterly fiscal year budget report about the general and education trust funds to the general court fiscal committee.

SB 610 — Allowing the insurance commissioner to approve innovative short or long-term care policies.

SB 619 — Establishing procedures for expedited court hearings and disposition of confiscated animals.

SB 633 — Relative to donations received by the granite patron of the arts fund.

SB 644 — Requiring background checks for solid waste and hazardous waste facility owners.

SB 655 — Relative to employee leasing companies, workers’ compensation coverage options, and a minimum wage exemption for minor league baseball players.

The New Hampshire House and Senate sent three bills to Gov. Kelly Ayotte, intended to enable more housing construction, overcoming opposition from the New Hampshire Municipal Association and others.

In a series of votes on the last standard session day of the year, Thursday, the House and Senate approved final versions of House Bill 1010, House Bill 1588, and Senate Bill 564, which address housing developments in commercial zones, parking requirements, and development on dead-end roads.

The bills now head to Ayotte’s desk and face strong prospects: Ayotte signed and celebrated a slate of bills in 2025 meant to spur housing, in large part by overriding perceived restrictive municipal zoning.

But they also overcame opposition from some who said they eroded needed guardrails for cities and towns, and could lead to safety issues and overcrowding in commercial areas.

“New Hampshire needs more affordable housing, but we also need smart growth, responsible planning, and local decision-making,” said Rep. David Preece, D-Manchester, speaking against the bills. “Housing and local control are not mutually exclusive.”

HB 1010 and HB 1588 are companion bills intended to update last year’s transformational housing statute for commercial zones.

That law, House Bill 631, is not set to take effect until July 1, about a year after it was signed. It requires municipalities to allow multi-family residential developments on commercially zoned land, as long as there are adequate roads, water, and sewage, and no issues with the site “incompatible with residential use,” such as air, noise, odor, or transportation impacts.

Both HB 1010 and HB 1588, if signed by Ayotte, would update HB 631 just one minute after it takes effect next month.

HB 1588 would tighten the law. It would clarify that the developers could build housing that passed the requirements “by right” in commercial zones — a stronger legal status. It would also limit the types of restrictions municipalities could place on that development to frontage, setbacks, and height requirements, excluding other factors such as density.

And if a developer sued after being improperly denied a permit by a municipality, the developer could seek attorneys’ fees from the city or town, the bill states.

“It addresses the ambiguity in the existing law that will result in taxpayer‑funded lawsuits, and also grants municipalities greater local control by clarifying that municipalities can do site review,” said Rep. Joe Alexander, R-Goffstown, who is the chairman of the House Housing Committee, in a speech on the House floor.

HB 1010, in contrast, would give municipalities tools to potentially limit certain developments. The bill would allow municipalities to carry out studies to determine whether the water, sewage, and traffic infrastructure is adequate before approving. If the road design did not support the expected traffic volume, for instance, the proposal could be denied.

Traffic studies could include increases in vehicle traffic on the roads, the availability of sidewalks, and other pedestrian safety measures. The bill would allow cities and towns to require developers to obtain approvals from the owners of public water and sewer systems before proceeding.

Together, the two bills are meant to clarify the intent and scope of last year’s commercial zoning bill, Alexander said.

“The only thing that we’re going to run into is that municipalities may be open to more lawsuits if we fail to clarify what we mean by these laws,” he said.

HB 1588 also includes an unrelated provision that would allow cities and towns to create “special assessment districts,” in which municipalities can issue bonds to pay for infrastructure upgrades and then levy fees on the developments that would benefit from the upgrades to pay off the bonds.

But opponents, such as the Municipal Association, warned HB 1588 would tie the hands of municipalities with reasonable concerns. In a handout given to lawmakers ahead of the vote, the association called the bill “one of the most anti-local control bills of the session.”

Preece agreed. “This bill goes further by overriding local zoning protections and by exposing municipalities to costly litigation, forcing taxpayers to pay attorneys when disputes arise,” he said. “This is not a housing policy; it is a mandate that shifts the risk and the cost onto local communities.”

SB 564 would address restrictions on dead-end roads. It would prevent cities and towns from imposing a maximum road length for new housing development, as long as that new development adheres to the state fire code.

It stops municipalities from capping the number of homes on a dead-end road, unless the cap is necessary to comply with the fire code or guidelines from the National Fire Protection Association.

And it requires cities and towns to allow utilities such as septic systems and electric distribution infrastructure to be installed in buffer areas, open spaces, as long as they aren’t wetlands or protected shorelands.

Again, opponents cited concerns of overdevelopment if the bill becomes law.

“Let’s take a look at what could be built on 100 housing lots,” said Rep. David Fracht, D-Enfield. “One hundred single-family homes? Certainly. One hundred duplexes or triplexes? Why not? How about 100 apartment buildings with an unlimited number of dwelling units? This bill places no cap on the number of dwelling units that can be built on these long dead-end roads.”

Alexander argued the bill would bring needed development while respecting safety concerns.

“This bill now clarifies and provides statutory requirements for local jurisdictions to follow relative to the state fire code,” he said.