The environmental group Standing Trees has sued the state government, alleging that officials have missed necessary pieces of the land management planning process.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington County Superior Court last week, asks the court to stop the state from authorizing new timber contracts in state forests, parks and wildlife management areas until a rulemaking process, which it claims is required by law, has been completed.
Public land comprises 8% of Vermont, according to the complaint, and the state is responsible for maintaining that land for multiple goals.
While a range of goals exist in Vermont statute — such as sustaining forest health, protecting wildlife, alleviating floods and erosion, and protecting health and safety of the public — the complaint claims that commissioners of key state agencies haven’t issued required rules that would ensure the state’s management process meets them all.
Instead, according to Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, the absence of those rules can place a premium on timber harvesting.
“Timber is not superior to those other goals,” he said. “But the way that we are managing public lands today in Vermont puts timber in an advantaged, privileged position. We really need to, in the face of climate change and extinction, you know, rebalance the way that we’re managing public lands.”
Standing Trees Inc., an organization that advocates to protect forests on public lands, filed the suit along with Duxbury residents Jamison Ervin and Alan Pierce.
Defendants included the state of Vermont; Michael Snyder, commissioner of the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; and Christopher Herrick, commissioner of the Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Snyder and a spokesperson for the Agency of Natural Resources, which houses both departments, did not reply to requests for comment on Monday afternoon.
The complaint points to a state law that requires the commissioners to “adopt and publish rules in the name of the Agency for the use of State forests, or park lands, including reasonable fees or charges for the use of the lands, roads, camping sites, buildings, and other facilities and for the harvesting of timber or removal of minerals or other resources from such lands.”
Written procedures, which commissioners rely on to decide how land will be used, are not public documents, the complaint claims, and haven’t been subjected to public comment, legislative oversight or judicial review, all of which would result from an official rulemaking process.
While Vermont’s 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act requires state agencies to consider greenhouse gas emission in their decision-making processes for “the planning, design, and operation of programs, services, and infrastructure,” the procedures don’t consider greenhouse gas emissions or flooding, the complaint alleges.
Snyder has previously told VTDigger that his department already has sufficient rules to guide the planning process. Last summer, Standing Trees filed a petition asking the state to begin rulemaking, which Snyder rejected.
Porter and other environmental advocates protested against a plan for the Camel’s Hump Management Unit — which includes logging — because it did not go through the rulemaking process. They said any planned logging should be stopped until the rulemaking process is completed.
In turn, Snyder has pointed to the public process that took place as the plan was being developed, saying members of the public filed hundreds of comments.
Snyder has called the group’s petition misguided, and said he thought it was part of a broader effort to stop logging on public lands.
Porter said his goal isn’t to end logging.
“There’s many ways in which a rule would ensure that the public interest is being met,” Porter said. “A rule is not going to change the fact that the state has the authority to log portions of state lands. So, that’s not what we’re arguing here.”