The Town of Dublin NH, population 1,577, sits in the heart of the Monadnock Region of Southwest NH. Dublin exemplifies a traditional New England landscape of old farm fields, extensive unbroken forested habitats, streams, and ponds, all surrounding a quaint historic village center. Mount Monadnock, the most climbed mountain in the east, and Dublin Lake are among the prominent landscape features that help define the community. The resulting rural character captures the heart and mind, and is deeply appreciated by resident and visitor alike. It is this same appreciation that draws people to the area, increasingly leading to subdivision of field and forest lands and the conversion of important wildlife habitat to residential use. This sprawling pattern is beginning to fragment habitat, degrade water quality, and erode the rural character that drew people to the town in the first place. Over the years, community surveys have confirmed that preserving Dublin’s rural character is one of the greatest priorities facing the town. In 2006 the town contracted with Southwest Region Planning Commission (SWRPC) to create a natural resource inventory and in 2007 to complete an update of the Town’s master plan. Over the last few years several of the town’s long time residents and community leaders volunteered to initiated a project to better understand the natural and cultural resources that contribute to Dublin’s rural character and quality of life and develop a plan to protect these resources. The group formed the Dublin Open Space Planning Committee with broad representation from many of the various civic groups in town. The committee analyzed the natural resource inventory, developing a generalized conservation priority map based on the scientific data and then began a long-term process of sharing the map with community members. The committee is also gathering citizen input through community surveys and by engaging town members during community events using the map and sticky dots to identify special places in town. The Participants are asked to consider what they feel makes the town special and to locate those places that contribute most to making Dublin special. Although the committee is continuing to share resource information and collect community input during town-wide events, the next step in the planning process, and the focus of this funding request, is to: 1) summarize the information that has been collected so that it can be used as a resource by the planning board, conservation commission, and select board to help them make better, more informed, land use decisions; and 2) create and refine conservation priorities at the parcel scale as a basis for reaching out to land owners. The land owner outreach seeks to inform and encourage conservation by sharing with land owners the cultural and natural resource values that have been identified with their land, gathering their input about what they think is special about their land, and talking with them about their future goals for their land. The proposed project includes initiating outreach to land owners, beginning with owners of large parcels in town, who the committee members believe might be open to the idea of land conservation. The project will also produce communication materials and strategies to continue to build broad community support for conserving important natural and cultural resource lands. These materials may include brochures, mailings, PowerPoint presentations and large format posters or maps. The strategies will be designed to ultimately build community support for increasing municipal funding to support land conservation efforts. The committee has partnered with the Monadnock Conservancy’s Monadnock Community Conservation Partnership program (MCCP) to assist with this project. The MCCP's role is to facilitate the committee’s process, to provide a structure and tools for completing the work, and to coach committee members in their outreach efforts. The MCCP program was developed by the Monadnock Conservancy to increase the pace and quality of land conservation in the Monadnock Region by helping towns build their own capacity to engage citizens to identify and conserve the town’s most important natural and cultural resources. The MCCP’s efforts are designed to assist communities to develop and implement action oriented open space plans that result in meaningful open space conservation.