PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) – Clean water, recreation and quality of life on and near the Seacoast are at stake if more isn’t done to conserve key natural areas, authors of a new plan warn.

The state and private conservation groups have identified 75 sites for conservation work from Seabrook, on the Massachusetts border, north to Wakefield, 35 miles upriver on the Maine-New Hampshire border.

“We want these to be “no-regret’ areas. One hundred years from now, we want people to say “we’re glad we did this,”‘ said Jack Savage of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

The goal is not wholesale conservation of the entire coastal watershed region, according to Michael Zankel of The Nature Conservancy, another group involved.

Zankel said the report identifies precise areas of “exceptional significance for protection” because of their direct impact on important natural resources. The sites include floodplains, which hold overflowing water during floods.

In addition to buffering floods, the sites include important wildlife habitats and water supplies. All are threatened by development and road construction, according to the report, “The Land Conservation Plan for New Hampshire’s Coastal Watersheds.”

Conservation groups produced the report with the state Department of Environmental Resources.

Some of the areas are small, such as Lower Little River in North Hampton and Copper Cedar Woods in New Durham.

Others are much larger – Great Bay, for example, and the Blue Hills north and east of Bow Lake in Strafford. The Blue Hills comprise 35,000 acres of unfragmented forest, high quality watersheds and fisheries. Only 4,000 acres are protected from development now.

Zankel said development in the Blue Hills would hurt wildlife and reduce or eliminate an important source or potential source of clean water, recreation and scenery.

“We really are in a race against time to save these special places,” he said during an aerial tour of the region Wednesday.

The low-level tour revealed swaths of clearcutting near the Crommett & Lubberland Creek in Newmarket and the shrinking wetland boundaries around Hampton Creek.

There are about 525,000 acres of coastal watershed in 46 New Hampshire communities. Since 1970, an average of 2,230 acres have been developed each year in Rockingham and Strafford counties.

But Zankel said the plan isn’t anti-development.

“There’s nothing wrong with high-density development if it’s done in the right places,” he said.

The state’s New Hampshire Coastal Program, the New Hampshire Estuaries Project, The Nature Conservancy, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and the Rockingham and Strafford regional planning commissions produced the plan.

Fields trips in the area are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Information is available at www.nature.org/newhampshire.

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Information from: Foster’s Daily Democrat, http://www.fosters.com

AP-ES-10-12-06 1543EDT