Vermont Logging Drawing Criticism

By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
THE RUTLAND HERALD
CHITTENDEN,Vt. —Leave the old trees alone, some are saying to the National Forest Service.

With a draft plan set to be released any day now, Green Mountain National Forest watchers are worried that older forests around the Chittenden and Mendon area will be slated for logging jobs in the coming years.

“The official title of the project is Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project,” said Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, which described itself as a volunteer coalition formed to preserve New England forests. “Most of this is a timber sale, but it will also have components of the project that are separate from the logging.”

The Telephone Gap is an area of Green Mountain National Forest centered around the Chittenden Reservoir. Porter said the nearest landmark would be the Mountain Top Inn and Resort.

The National Forest Service held some public outreach events in 2021, many dealing with the internet owing to the pandemic, soliciting public feedback on the proposal. Nothing that’s been released so far by the Forest Service has been final, Porter said, but it is contemplating allowing up to 10,900 acres to be logged over a period of several years.

A “scoping notice” is expected to be released by the Forest Service any day now, said Porter, which will trigger a 30-day public comment period and include the actual proposal for what’s to be logged and where, but if past projects are any indication, then several thousand acres will likely be made available for logging.

Logging isn’t the issue, per se, according to Porter, rather it’s the kind of forest that might end up being cut that has the coalition, its allies, and some locals concerned.

Standing Trees has released a report, “Climate Forests — Worth More Standing,” available online at bit.ly/Forest714, which lists the Green Mountain National Forest as one of several where the Forest Service is planning or proposing to log older, mature forest areas.

“The really interesting thing about the Telephone Gap project, the reason that we are concerned about it and that it’s featured in this report, is that the Telephone Gap project is about the oldest block of forest land on the Green Mountain National Forest.”

A little over half of the project area is more than a century old, some of it quite older than even that.

“There’s not a lot of it, but there’s more here in this landscape than there is in Vermont in general,” said Porter.

According to Porter, the justification for cutting older forests has been to create what’s called early successional habitat. Some question whether more of this type of habitat is needed, and whether it’s worth losing older forests to make it.

“We have more logging of old forest going on here in Vermont than in many other parts of the country, and I don’t think people realize how much logging is going on in the Green Mountain National Forest right now,” he said. “They’ve already approved 40,000 acres of logging within the last six years or so and this project could potentially approve another 10,900 acres.”

Rick Enser, a retired ecologist who used to work for the state of Rhode Island’s Department of environmental Management, said Wednesday that while it remains to be seen what the plan is for the Telephone Gap, similar proposals around Manchester have allowed for the logging of older forests.

“My take on it is there is a pretty strong feeling out there now, among (Porter’s) group and other people as well, that we should be retaining forest, especially on public land, for two reasons. One is to provide more carbon sequestration and carbon storage in old growth forests, and then also to provide for greater biodiversity.”

Enser, of Hartland, used to live around Barnard and Salisbury, and is familiar with this region of the Green Mountain National Forest. He said the world is dealing with a carbon crisis and a biodiversity crisis, and the last thing that’s needed is to cut old growth to make way for early successional habitat.

Justin Lindholm, of Mendon, said Wednesday that he has no issue with the creation of early successional habitat, but doesn’t like where and how the federal government goes about doing it.

Lindholm is an experienced hunter and woodcutter whose family has managed about 20 acres of early successional habitat on their property, near the Green Mountain National Forest. Species such as deer favor the new growth because it produces more food for them, but they particularly like these areas when they’re away from the deep woods and nearer to human settlement.

“The federal government doesn’t seem to understand that you don’t want to do an early successional way deep into the woods because that’s where the predators are, the bears and bobcats and coyotes that will lie in wait for the deer, the fawns and other early successional wildlife,” he said.

Lindholm is eager to see the Telephone Gap proposal. A planned early successional habitat can be a good thing if done right, he said, but often they’re done wrong. The key, he said, is long-term management. After about nine years these early successional areas grow up and become less attractive as a food source, meaning they need to be maintained.

Porter said that his coalition is hoping the Forest Service will take notice of an executive order signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year directing it to take an inventory of the National Forests old growth with the intention of protecting it.

Queries from the Herald directed to the Green Mountain National Forest leadership were directed to the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. An email from the USDA press office linked to a public comment page bit.ly/Inventory714 regarding Biden’s order.

“The Forest Service looks forward to playing a role in convening the public, private and government land managers, the natural resources science community, and people and organizations across a broad spectrum with a focused interest on this important issue,” stated Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, in a USDA statement.

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