On more than 200 acres in Lincoln, Sarah Laird’s land is home to moose, black bear, hermit thrush and Eastern newts. Swaths of forest, surface waters and riparian areas hold great ecological importance — the state has designated those areas as “highest priority interior forest blocks.”
Laird would like biodiversity and climate resilience to take center stage in her land management plan, but she says a state program widely credited with helping Vermont conserve forests is standing in the way: Current Use.
On Tuesday, the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife voted 8-3 to approve 21-1031, a bill that would expand Current Use to allow some landowners to manage their land for strictly environmental purposes.
The Current Use program, which began in 1980, allows landowners to be taxed based on the value of their undeveloped land, rather than on its value in the marketplace, the program’s manual says.
Right now, landowners are eligible only if they farm or log their land. It’s a trade: Landowners receive a lower tax rate for contributing to Vermont’s economy. Working forests generate around $1.5 billion annually, according to the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Increasingly, landowners like Laird, environmentalists and those concerned about climate change have encouraged the expansion of Current Use. Similar programs exist in other New England states.
“Land which remains unchanged is a true benefit to the citizens of the state and should be incentivized as such,” New Hampshire’s Current Use booklet says.
The bill, now headed to the House Ways and Means Committee, relies heavily on a report with recommendations from Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. The report says a total of around 30% of land in the Current Use program could be managed under a new “Reserved Forestland” category.
Laird, who holds a master’s degree in forestry, wrote in testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee that she is “not opposed to a forest economy that includes timber.”
“However, in my experience, the focus of the program has grown extremely narrow over time and today — despite language referencing biodiversity, wildlife and ecosystem services — is focused primarily on timber production,” she wrote. “This is out of step with the priorities of many private landowners, as well as the latest and best science.”
Reserved forestland
Forests cover nearly 4.6 million acres in Vermont. Of that, 80% are privately owned. Of all of the privately owned forest, 60% — around 2 million acres — is enrolled in Current Use, also called use value appraisal.
Less than 1% of Vermont’s forests have reached old-growth status, according to the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Due to the amount of forestland enrolled in the program, “Vermont will only achieve the targets it has established for its forest conditions if the management strategies to attain them are eligible” for Current Use, according to the report on which the bill is based, submitted by Michael Snyder, commissioner of the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Under the proposal, a parcel would become eligible for the new category only if at least 30% of its enrolled acreage contained certain conditions. Those include some ecologically significant areas, along with areas that make it difficult to harvest trees: steep hillsides and areas with poor soils.
The department determined through a modeling exercise that around 32% of the parcels currently enrolled in Current Use and 30% of those that are eligible for Current Use could enter the reserve forestland category.
Letting the land be itself
A movement is growing to passively manage forests so that they reach old-growth status. While its advocates recognize the bill’s proposed subcategory as a step forward, many who testified before the committee said the bill doesn’t go far enough.
Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife, said the bill “enables us to meet some of our old forest goals.”
A plan endorsed by the Fish & Wildlife Department, called Vermont Conservation Design, recommends managing about 9% of Vermont’s forests for passive rewilding. Around 3% of the state’s forests are managed passively now.
Zack Porter, director of Standing Trees, an organization that advocates for more protection and restoration of Vermont’s public lands, said the Natural Resources Committee brought a conversation about wild forests to the Statehouse for what may have been the first time.
“But we had a big opportunity to rise up to the challenges of climate change and extinction,” he said. “They have all the reason and then some — from science, from the Climate Action Plan, from Vermont Conservation Design — to put a bold vision forward, and this bill is just a baby step in the right direction when we really needed a leap forward.”
He said he’ll be working alongside other wild forest organizations to “make sure the bill gets stronger.”
Meanwhile, Snyder has told the Natural Resources Committee that the new category needs careful consideration. Current Use is already responsible for keeping the state so heavily forested, he said, and he said active management can help achieve environmental goals.
Logging is different from deforestation, he said, and many plans don’t require landowners to cut often.
“It can be a lot of different things, including no activity for long periods of time — not forever, and not without a good reason,” he said.
Snyder said many nuances exist in the Current Use program, in which foresters typically create specialized plans with landowners based on their specific land management goals.
Porter, however, feels the issue is more black and white.
“The state of Vermont is telling forest landowners who may be struggling to make ends meet that they have a choice: Stay on your land and log it, or risk being forced into a position to sell or subdivide,” he said. “No other New England state forces landowners into such a stark decision.”
Vermont’s Climate Council included the concept in its Climate Action Plan, but it was among four of the plan’s more than 230 proposals that Gov. Phil Scott’s administration opposed.
“Changes to the UVA program have significant implications and consequences for tax policy and revenue that require careful examination,” a statement from the Scott administration said.
On the other hand, Rich Holschuh, a representative of the Elnu Abenaki Tribe who testified before the Natural Resources Committee, said the Climate Action Plan itself clarifies the issue.
“One of the easiest things we can do is to let the land be itself and do what it does best, and for us to stop interfering with that,” he said. “There are very few wild forests, ancient forests in this state — very, very few. We need to change that.”
Asked Monday whether committee members were likely to consider any further changes to expand the reserved forestland category before the Tuesday vote, Sheldon said it wasn’t likely.
“In the governor’s response to the Climate Action Plan, he very specifically called out changes to Current Use to include wild forest easements as something he does not support,” Sheldon said. “So we’re hoping that this is something he can support.”