Home to more than 14 million people, New England supports complex systems of life ranging from bobcats, bog turtles and piping plovers to lynx and Karner blue butterflies. The region is an integral part of the Atlantic flyway, a migratory bird super highway that links north to south. Southern New England, where European settlers first arrived half a millennia ago, is today a window into the future, where an increasing human population means we can no longer think of wild places as wholly removed from human locales.
Conversely, the northern reaches of the region—stretching from the Adirondacks into Canada—include one of the largest intact temperate forests remaining on the globe.
The Open Space Institute offers a suite of grant and loan programs, each designed to conserve the very best of the region’s wildlife habitat and working landscapes.
What ties these funds together is OSI’s recognition of the interdependence of people and community and the importance of landscape connectivity. We seek to fund projects that are part of a larger ecological whole—that link, buffer and expand existing protected areas and conserve key corridors that will prove crucial as our climate changes.
Active Regional Funds Community Forest Fund
 OSI's Community Forest Fund helps rural communities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont gain control not only of their forests but also their economic futures.
Transborder Fund
Transborder Land Protection Fund addresses conservation in the complex, largely forested Northern Appalachian eco-region of southern Canada and Northern New England.
Completed New England Funds
February 2013
Saving New England’s Wildlife
This program protected wildlife habitat in some of New England’s most critical and imperiled areas. Saving New England’s Wildlife made grants to land trusts in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusettes, aiding in the conservation of over 20,000 acres and leveraging $45 million in public and private conservation funding.
Northern Forest Protection Fund
Launched in 2000, the Northern Forest Protection Fund helped permanently protect over 1.2 million acres in one of the nation’s most important forested landscapes.
Western Massachusetts Land Protection Fund
The Western Massachusetts Protection Fund supports conservation of large forested landscapes in the western half of the Commonwealth, with a focus on protecting wildlife habitat and productive woodlands.
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