![]() ![]() It’ll be these up to two-acre clear cuts.”įoresters say this type of active management helps make Vermont’s forests more diverse in age and creates wildlife habitat. “It’ll be, if you look at it from above, like Swiss cheese in the forest. “ about 110-years-old - that’s the stand age they’ve reported on their maps,” he said. He gestured to some trees about two-feet thick in diameter. Zack Porter is with the old forest advocacy group Standing Trees.īefore the Forest Service meeting, he led a hike to an area in Chittenden slated for something called “group selection” - where a logger cuts patches in the forest, like a checkerboard. More from Vermont Public: Meet the parasitoid wasps scientists hope will save (some) of Vermont's ash treesįorest Service officials say they plan to study how what’s proposed would impact forest carbon before making a decision about the project.īut there’s another underlying tension at play: The Forest Service and some advocates disagree over whether logging can make a forest healthier in the decades to come. Still, President Biden recently signed an executive order that requires federal regulators to consider carbon storage and the benefits of old forests when making decisions about public land. Scientists are still figuring out the best way to count the carbon stored in a forest over time. Because that’s a very good way to store carbon.” “And that I think that calls for different management practices on our forests, and really counting how much we are storing carbon in our forests. “We are in an undeniable climate crisis - climate emergency - in Vermont, the U.S., in the world, by any measure,” Coppock said. He likes to hike in the area and opposes the logging.Ĭoppock also attended the meeting in Chittenden, and he says a lot has changed since that forest plan was created in 2006. Vermont Public A slice of forest proposed for group selection management - which is like a very small series of clear cuts in a patchwork pattern -under the Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Plan.ĭave Coppock of Rutland City sits on the board for the Killington chapter of the Green Mountain Club. It argues even the 540 acres proposed for 20- to 30-acre clear cuts - about 20 of which are in that roadless area - will make the forest more diverse, in age and species. The agency says it’s in line with the Forest Plan, the overarching document that sets goals for management in the national forest. The Green Mountain National Forest argues this logging will make the forest healthier. More from Vermont Public: A warm start to winter adds to challenges for Vermont’s logging industry And this forest? It really needs some attention." "If you don’t take care of it, you don’t manage it, you just let it go and then you go back thinking ‘Oh, my vegetables are gonna be right there waiting for me,’ you ain’t gonna get nothing. “If you plant it, take care of it, weed it, go back and pick some nice vegetables you get rewarded," Gagnon said. He sees harvesting timber as similar to gardening. He’s handing the business down to his son now, and he’s in favor of the proposal. He started a sawmill in Pittsford in the late 1950s. Joe Gagnon was at the meeting in Chittenden. The area hasn’t been logged since the 1980s and ‘90s. If the project is approved, the Forest Service says this will be the biggest timber harvest in Telephone Gap since it became federal land. ![]() It includes part of a 16,000-acre swath of forest that was once proposed for federal wilderness and that has no modern roads. The 70,000-acre area is located in the Green Mountain National Forest, in the towns of Brandon, Chittenden, Goshen, Killington, Mendon, Pittsfield, Pittsford and Stockton. More from Vermont Public: University of Vermont study finds warming winters pose a threat to water quality in most U.S. The Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project spells out a suite of projects regulators want to take on to meet their long-term goals for the national forest. Vermont Public A crowd packs into the gym at Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden, filling the bleachers for an informational meeting hosted by the Green Mountain National Forest about the Telephone Gap IRP.
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