The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests will close on two North Country parcels to block the intended route of Northern Pass, and will work with donors and landowners to buy two other tracts.

The organization set a deadline of Oct. 31 to raise $2.5 million for the four parcels; by late last week it had $868,500 for its Trees Not Towers campaign.

"We had a number of donors who expressed hope that they could somehow give in the 2013 tax year," society spokesman Jack Savage said, noting there have been more than 850 donors so far. The properties to be conserved total more than 1,800 acres in and around Stewartstown.

Martin Murray, spokesman for the Northern Pass, said the society's efforts to thwart the project have failed.

"The Forest Society's failed fund-raiser is not a surprise given the circumstances," Murray wrote in an email. "New Hampshire and Coos County in particular are struggling with high unemployment amid difficult economic times. Meanwhile, the Forest Society is pleading for money to try to kill a project that will create 1,200 jobs, provide cheaper energy and pump $230 million into the Coos County economy alone."

Northern Pass is a proposed 180-mile transmission line to bring hydro power to New England from Quebec. Northeast Utilities, the parent company of Public Service of New Hampshire and Hydro Quebec, is floating the $1.1 billion project. Officials have said they have "99 percent" of the land they need in the North Country.

The project has to find about 40 miles of right-of-way in Coos County, and still needs Forest Service permission to cross 10 miles of the White Mountain National Forest to connect wires from Canada to the existing 140 miles of right-of-way PSNH already owns from Groveton to Deerfield.

Murray said Northern Pass recently held two gatherings with potential workers in the North Country to discuss jobs and got "extremely positive" feedback.

"Our goal is to stop Northern Pass as proposed in the North Country in order to protect 180 miles of New Hampshire, including the White Mountains, from the unnecessary blight of more than 1,100 towers," the forest society's Jane Difley said. "Northern Pass's proposal is outdated, and stopping them from moving forward would appear to be the only way to start a serious discussion of more common-sense ways to transmit electricity, such as burial along transportation corridors."

Earlier this year, the society successfully raised $800,000 to buy land to block the Northern Pass route near the Balsams Resort in Dixville.