The Turning Point
Cooperating for Forest Conservation
Editor’s Note: Even before the recent change in administration, there was growing division among natural resource professionals in New England about how best to achieve the complementary goals of protecting wildlands and old-growth forests; supporting a thriving timber economy and wood products industry through ecological forestry; conserving farmland; and sustaining healthy communities. Jamey Fidel has been, for many years, a champion of collaboration in conservation, a seeker of unity rather than division. This commentary could not be more fitting in these times, and for this particular issue of From the Ground Up. - Liz Thompson
We are at a major turning point when it comes to the vitality of our landscape. We are faced with multiple crises that are creating enormous pressure on our residents and the environment, but rather than working together, we are becoming divided over how to manage land.
Climate change is causing unprecedented flooding in our region, yet broader impacts such as wildfires and air pollution will continue to make northern New England an attractive place for people to relocate. While we are going to see increasing pressure to provide more housing for climate migrants, housing is currently unaffordable for and inaccessible to many people, placing enormous pressure on policymakers.
While land use regulations are coming under scrutiny, the pattern of development outside of our cities has contributed to rural sprawl, impacting the iconic forests of our region. We are losing undeveloped forestland at a concerning rate, leading to biodiversity loss as more habitat becomes fragmented and converted.
Forest fragmentation results from the proliferation of poorly planned development and the desirability of second homes with long driveways to private enclaves. Photo © A. Blake Gardner
All of these pressures are forcing critical questions about the way we manage land, including both private and public land. The overwhelming majority of our forestland is privately owned, which means we need to ensure that landowners have the necessary tools to steward their land and keep forests healthy.
This is critically important because the average age of a forestland owner in our region is quite high—63 years—indicating a looming turnover in ownership. If a landowner has not planned ahead, all too often the land becomes subdivided when the heirs take over. So landowners must be equipped with strategies to conserve and promote the long-term health of their forests.
For forest landowners in this region, planning for the future is critical. Bob and Sue Lloyd purchased over 1,100 acres in Tinmouth, Vermont, with the help of friends as part of a long-term vision for protecting farmland and forestland. Photo © A. Blake Gardner
In 1980, Bob and Sue donated a conservation easement on their entire land to the Ottauquechee Regional Land Trust (now the Vermont Land Trust) and to the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, thus restricting subdivisions and commercial uses, while allowing forestry and agricultural uses. They have since passed away, but their conservation legacy will live on. Photo © A. Blake Gardner
Ecological forestry is one option for landowners to maintain the integrity of their land. As a management tool, it provides landowners with strategies for addressing important considerations, such as how to manage for forest health, changing tree species, invasives, carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. At the same time, it can, in many cases, provide some income to offset the cost of owning forestland. Ecological forestry can be practiced by private landowners working with qualified professionals, and it can be showcased on public lands—federal, state, or municipal.
Recently, Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) teamed up with Audubon Vermont and Professor William Keeton of the University of Vermont to recommend exactly such an approach for the Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project on the Green Mountain National Forest (GMNF). The original proposal for the project posed concerns around the logging of old forests, among other things. Concurrently, a national-level policy to protect old forests across the entire National Forest System was taking shape, although it was later canceled.
Since the protection of all remaining old growth was a focus of the national policy, Dr. Keeton suggested a “triad” approach—inspired by a model first proposed in 1991 by Dr. Robert Seymour and Dr. Malcom Hunter of the University of Maine. Their model approach recommended allocating portions of the landscape to no-touch ecological reserves and other areas to more intensive wood production while implementing ecological forestry on the remaining majority of lands for diverse benefits.
Our version of the triad proposed one group of lands to be set aside for old growth protection based on a detailed set of criteria; a second category where ecological and climate-smart forestry approaches would be used to accelerate late-successional and old forest conditions; and a third category allocated to an array of forest management activities, including the creation of young forest and commercial timber harvest.
Old trees support diverse communities of mosses and lichens. Photo © Liz Thompson
We were pleased when the GMNF adapted our recommendations in its proposed final decision. To ensure that old growth would be protected on the 35,489 acres of National Forest in the project area, a minimum of 1,000 acres of state-designated significant old forests by the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department will be off limits to harvesting. In addition, the Forest Service set aside 661 additional acres of mature forest due to their substantial late-successional characteristics and agreed to a fine-filter measure that would require field inventories to identify and protect additional old-growth stands based on benchmarks and criteria specifically applicable to New England’s northern hardwood and northern hardwood-conifer forests. Overall, 86 percent of the project area would continue to develop as late successional (mature and old) forest into the foreseeable future.
As part of its management approach, the Forest Service settled on 7,743 acres for potential harvest treatment, including 4,780 acres for more conventional forestry, and 3,611 acres where, utilizing a more novel approach, ecological forestry principles would be implemented to retain and enhance late-successional and old forest conditions. This includes the creation of snags and downed wood, as well as opportunities to improve the structural complexity of the forests.
As with any proposal for public land management, there is room to debate the finer details of this strategy. For example, some advocates believe that all mature forests, including those identified through a national inventory, should have been allocated to reserve status. It is important to note that the inventory was intended as a coarse level starting point for estimating mature and old-growth forest among different regions of the National Forest system. Our Region 9 includes 19 different National Forests across a 20-state region. According to the published inventory, the regionally identified stands were not intended as an automatic threshold for old-growth protection across the national forests; each forest would need to develop criteria and strategies applicable to the old-growth forests in their area.
We advocated for an approach that would protect old-growth stands based on local scientific research and field verifiable criteria applicable to the GMNF. The fact that the Forest Service was willing to adopt new protection measures for old growth and implement the triad approach provides an opportunity to demonstrate a holistic, precedent-setting model. By integrating protection; restoration; and ecological, climate-smart forestry to enhance old forest characteristics, it provides a framework that can be adapted nationwide with appropriate regional and local modifications for each national forest.
Healthy forests provide clean water and mitigate downstream flooding. Photo © A. Blake Gardner
An integral part of our recommendations included advocating for both active and passive management to promote resilient forests and diverse habitat conditions. Active stewardship can benefit wildlife species and diverse management goals, while passive management allows forests to reach a structural complexity that helps to maintain biodiversity and store a great deal of carbon. I believe that we need both options, and that we need them to be represented in adequate percentages and geographic distribution across the landscape.
We need passively-managed areas—Wildlands—at all elevations and in all biophysical regions, not just the mountainous regions where many of them are found now. And we need lands that are actively managed, with ecological forestry principles, throughout the region as well, to support local economies, supply the wood we use, and provide habitat for certain desirable wildlife species.
We have an opportunity to come together and develop strategies to accelerate Wildland management and ecological forestry—but there is a public debate happening about whether to strictly employ one tactic over another. For example, there are calls to eliminate all harvesting on public lands, and to treat all public lands as ecological reserves.
“Ecological forestry can be practiced by private landowners working with qualified professionals, and it can be showcased on public lands”
While the idea of promoting more ecological reserves deserves much attention and support, the debate about how to get there is creating a divide in the forest conservation community. This divide is currently not in a productive place, and the discourse is becoming personal and vitriolic. For example, a recent letter to the editor in VTDigger proclaimed that the organizations supporting the triad approach described above were “digging in their heels for more reckless logging on our public lands.” The letter continued, “with conservation groups like Vermont Natural Resources Council and Audubon Vermont, do forests even need enemies?”
I recall a similar time several decades ago, after the forest plan for the GMNF was revised and new wilderness designations were passed into law, when the forest conservation and forestry communities were divided. We initiated a Forest Roundtable to bring together diverse stakeholders to learn from one another, and importantly, to listen to one another. After a year of discussion, we published a blueprint for the future of Vermont’s forests. The recommendations came from conversations that allowed us to understand that instead of fighting over the management of one area of land, we all wanted a future where our forests had a shot at surviving the enormous and mounting challenges of the time.
The Forest Roundtable. Photo © A. Blake Gardner
The Forest Roundtable is not the only successful model for finding common ground. The Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities initiative has brought together diverse interests to agree that we should accelerate Wildlands and old-growth conservation to at least 10 percent of our landscape, while accommodating housing, food production, and ecological forestry on an adequate amount of additional land. Other initiatives and reports, such as Vermont Conservation Design and Beyond the “Illusion of Preservation,” have called for similar allocations.
In addition, many states in our region are currently implementing legislation to conserve 30 percent of the land base by 2030. In Vermont we are even planning to try to meet a 50 by 50 goal. These planning initiatives offer opportunities to examine different approaches for meeting the conservation goals supporting both ecological reserves and working forests, but in order for the strategies to be viable, interested parties need to find solutions that can be supported and implemented without fracturing an entire community of stakeholders. This usually takes a willingness to listen, compromise, and find common ground. It can be done if stakeholders keep open minds.
“While the idea of promoting more ecological reserves deserves much attention and support, the debate about how to get there is creating a divide in the forest conservation community.”
As an example, a non-traditional alliance of advocates—affordable housing developers, the Chamber of Commerce, VNRC, regional planners, and other interested parties—recently came together to agree on a framework to modernize Vermont’s land use laws to incentivize development in smart growth locations, while strengthening protections for forests and critical resource areas. The common ground that was forged through in-depth listening and strategy sessions led to one the most comprehensive land use reforms in the history of the state.
We have intense challenges, but there is a path to finding common ground. We need to stop attacking people who have different opinions about the management of our land, and come together to advance the mutual goals that many of us share: promoting ecological forestry, supporting more ecological reserves, and finding ways to increase the resiliency of our communities and forests in ways that sustain the ecological and economic health of our region.
I am struck by a comment I recently read from Dr. Seymour in the Forest Monitor. He said, “We tend to get into these win lose arguments about the right kind of forestry, but this is a fallacy, there isn’t any one right kind of forestry.” I tend to agree, and I would expand this philosophy to the broader conversation around land management in general. We can listen to each other more, work together, and find solutions that can be supported by policymakers and decision makers, or we can resort to claiming that we have one silver-bullet answer and call anyone who disagrees with us the enemy. The first option provides a viable path. The second will lead to failure for all of us who care about our forests.
Photo © A. Blake Gardner
Photo © A. Blake Gardner
Jamey Fidel is Forest and Wildlife Program Director and General Counsel with Vermont Natural Resources Council. Jamey has a BS in environmental studies with a minor in wildlife biology from University of Vermont’s School of Natural Resources, and a JD and Master of Environmental Law degree from Vermont Law School. In addition to his state-level legislative and policy work, and leadership of the Forest Roundtable, Jamey works with communities across Vermont promoting planning, zoning, and non-regulatory strategies for forestland and wildlife habitat conservation. Jamey held leadership positions with conservation organizations in the Rockies prior to returning to Vermont. He and his wife, Rachel, live in Waitsfield.