Advisory Council Members - New Hampshire

The geographic locations of our New Hampshire Advisory Council members are indicated by the highlighted towns below. Clicking on the darker purple towns will lead you to our current AC members. The lighter purple towns represent former AC members. 

Current Advisory Council Members - New Hampshire

Tom Thomson
RR1 Orford, NH 03777
Phone: (603) 353-4488
Fax: (603) 353-4442

Tom Thomson resides in Oxford, New Hampshire with his wife Sheila and their son Stacey near by. Together the family runs and operates the Thomson Family Tree Farm. The Thomsons have been managing their 1682-acre tree farm since 1989 with an emphasis on demonstrating to others the true meaning of a "working sustainable forest". Tom’s son, Stacey, began cutting firewood when he was 12 years old. He built up his firewood business over the years and now delivers over 100 cords each year that he manages to cut on weekends. Tom and Sheila believe that some of the most important benefits their tree farm has provided are the rewards of hard work, pride in ownership, and most importantly a shared land ethic carried on by their son. In addition to managing the family tree farm, Tom is currently chair of the American Tree Farm System’s National Policy Committee and vice-chair of its National Operating Committee. Tom is known in the forestry community as an active, committed forestry advocate. In 1997 the Thomson family was awarded the Northeastern Regional Outstanding Tree Farmer award.

Spencer Laramie
RR #4 Box 342, Enfield, NH 03748
Phone: (603) 632-4887
Email: spencerlaramie@hotmail.com

 
Spencer Laramie is a lifelong New Hampshire resident. He attended Lebanon High School and after that, the school of hard knocks. He lives in Caanan with his wife Kim and daughter Kiah. Spencer first got into logging about ten years ago when he was an out-of-work carpenter looking for something to do during winter. He answered a newspaper ad for a chopping job, and has been logging ever since. He serves as chairman of the board for the NH Timber Harvest Council, and is in his fifth year as an instructor for the Council’s Professional Logger Program. He has completed five levels of "The Game of Logging", and took second place in the 1999 regional competition. Spencer was one of the first NH loggers to be certified by the Yankee Forest Safety Network in NH.

Former Advisory Council Members - New Hampshire

Peter Benson
Northern NH Program Mgr.
The Nature Conservancy
PO Box 310
North Conway, NH 03860
Phone: (603) 356-8833
Email: pbenson@tnc.org

Peter Benson graduated from Iona College in 1986 with a B.A. in History. His love for Northern New England began when he was young, spending summers in the White Mountains. Peter worked for the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Hut system for seven years, finishing as assistant huts manager. He is an experienced guide, and has led hiking and skiing trips all over the country. Peter began work for The Nature Conservancy in 1991, managing the Green Hills Preserve in North Conway. He is currently the Northern New Hampshire Program Manager for The Nature Conservancy, managing the Conservancy’s preserves totaling 28,000 acres, and TNC’s, community development and management interests in northern New Hampshire.

Peter’s interests include White Mountain history, culture, art and books; telemark, backcountry and cross country skiing; gardening and tree farming as a maple syrup producer; fly fishing; hiking and camping. He is a volunteer firefighter and a church Sunday School teacher/coordinator. Peter has served on numerous charitable, economic development, land trust, and other non-profit boards regionally. He currently lives in Jackson, NH with his wife Emily and two children.

George "Al" Ports
27 Cranberry Bog Road
Rumney, NH 03282
Phone: (603) 786-9002
Email: a_ports@yahoo.com

Al and his family moved to Grafton County’s Baker River Valley in 1974 after working with the Department of Defense for 13 years in Maryland and abroad. He has been a real estate practioner since 1975, owning his own company that specializes in rural properties, both residential and forestland. He is a REALTOR and over the years has been president of the local REALTOR board, as well as long-time chairman of its Professional Standards Committee. Al has just completed a six-year term as a trustee for the Audubon Society of New Hampshire where he chaired the society’s Sanctuaries and Land Management Advisory Committee, and has served on its Development, Outreach and other committees. He has been a director of the Rumney Ecological Systems since 1990, and is a past president of that organization. Al is avid "bird watcher" and travels throughout the country pursuing that hobby, trying to see in real life what he has seen as pictures in books. He frequently is a leader for birding trips in the local area where he lives. For more than 20 years Al traveled New England as a collegiate and scholastic referee of soccer, basketball and lacrosse. Along the way he found time to climb all of the 4,000-foot mountains in New England. Al holds a BA from Rutgers University and a MEd from Plymouth State College. He is a graduate of the NH Coverts program. Al and is wife Candy currently live in Rumney, New Hampshire, and have two children, David with the Eastern NY Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and Laura, a registered nurse in the hospice field. They have three grandchildren.

Laura Tam
Concord, NH

Laura is a native of Honolulu, Hawaii, spent time in the Adirondacks of New York during her childhood. Laura has a degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College where she studied land and natural resource use, biogeography, environmental policy, and community-based conservation. As part of her work over the past three years with the Northern Forest Center, she conducted an oral history project interviewing over 80 residents of the Northern Forest about the region's culture, sense of place, and community identity. A publication featuring quotes, stories, photographs of participants, and a narrative of this project will be completed this fall by the Center. Laura also works on Center projects related to sustainable development, regional well-being, and cultural heritage education in the Northern Forest. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, kayaking, biking, and skiing, playing violin in the New Hampshire Philharmonic, and occasionally fiddling with the band Cuckoo's Nest at contradances in Vermont and New Hampshire.