This commentary is by Michael Shank, a resident of Montpelier.
Here’s the only time I’ll ever utter the following phrase: Vermont should be more like Alabama and Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas, and Missouri and Montana. All these states, and nearly a dozen more, have a law in place that I wish that Vermont would institute.
They all have what’s called a “purple paint law.”. And that purple paint, marked around the border of one’s property, lets people know that they are on private property and serves as a “no trespassing” symbol to prohibit hunting, fishing, trapping and more.
But not here in Vermont. Here, our operating premise is that everyone’s personal property is, well, everyone’s public property to do what you want with unless told or signaled otherwise.
Now, if Vermont’s approach was more closely aligned with many Native and Indigenous perspectives that suggest we’re “living with the land” and not private, permanent “owners” of the land, I could support that approach and premise. Vermont could even go further on this front and start repairing past colonial harms by returning stewardship of this land to its rightful caretakers from which it was seized and never ceded.
Fully embracing that approach — i.e., that we’re stewards and caretakers living with the land and not privately owning it — would also enact and ensure far greater protections for habitat and wildlife than we currently require of property owners. So, a resounding “yes” to that approach if that’s the angle that Vermont is exploring here.
That’s not the foundation for Vermont, however. And when I first moved to Vermont and bought a 76-acre farm, I couldn’t believe that the onus was on me, every single year, to post and label signs on the perimeter, record it with the town clerk, and pay a fee — simply because I didn’t want anyone to come onto my land with a weapon and kill wild animals on my property.
That labor-intensive task shouldn’t be on me. It shouldn’t be on me to annually post my farm, with forest and wetlands surrounding it, saying that I want my land to be used the way I intended it. I should be able to do that once — and only once — and it should last the entire life of my stewardship of that property. The same goes with registering once with the town clerk. That one-off approach, which nearly 20 U.S. states have taken with the purple paint law, makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is an approach that is so easily dismantled and destroyed. Vermont’s flimsy “posted” approach — in which light plastic paper that says “no trespassing” is stapled to trees bordering the property — leads to vandalism and the easy removal by trespassers. It’s happened to me and other neighbors; it’s a common practice.
They’re not weatherproof and tear-proof like the manufacturer claims, and they get torn up all the time. And if someone tears down just one sign, your land is no longer considered posted and, thus, protected.
What doesn’t make sense is an approach that is ableist in nature. That requires folks throughout rural Vermont, many of whom are older in age, to canvass their property every single year to ensure it is newly posted, which, as has already been articulated by others before me, is a dangerous and precarious requirement by the state. This is putting older Vermonters directly in harm’s way.
What doesn’t make sense is the assumption that your land is, by default, hunters’ land, with a hunter’s right to access. That shouldn’t be the default, which is why the conservative states mentioned above rightly put the default in the hands of the property owner who purchased the land, not some potential passerby and trespasser.
What this illogical policy leads to is a lot of ill-will, which we’re seeing across Vermont as conflicts over posted land use increase. And I get it. This feeling I’ve had, ever since owning property in Vermont, that the property isn’t really mine as the default, and that there could easily be armed people on it, entering in spots in the border perimeter where signs were removed, is very unsettling.
As a result, I never really feel safe on my own property, the safety of which the Vermont Constitution’s Article 1 claims to protect. Frankly, I’m tired of having to wear orange when hiking my forest so that I don’t get accidentally shot while stewarding the land for the next generation. That’s not freedom.
It’s long past time that Vermont joined the rest of these conservative states, respected the property owner and their safety as the default on this issue, and instated a purple paint law to replace the flimsy, plastic, posted system that’s so easily dismantled and destroyed.
People want to be safe on their own property, something to which the Vermont Constitution is committed. They don’t want to constantly post plastic paper signs saying that they don’t want unwanted weapons or wildlife killed on their property. That should be a one-and-done deal. It’s long past time to update this outdated policy and much of rural America has already done so. It’s your turn, Vermont.