A New Forest Plan and an Opportunity

By law, every national forest must revise its management plan every 10 to 15 years. The revisions must take into account new scientific knowledge and new patterns of use. The process also includes an opportunity for public participation.

The Forest Service is involved in that process now for the Green Mountain National Forest and the current phase is a very important one. The agency has published its draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS. The document includes a number of alternative management approaches and identifies the one the agency prefers. Its preference in the Green Mountain draft is disappointing. It's now our turn to weigh in.

Short Shrift for Wilderness

None of the alternatives the Forest Service offers in its draft plan comes close to recommending the amount of wilderness that a majority of Vermonters requested throughout the planning process. We have an important opportunity now to protect over 80,000 acres of additional wilderness in Glastenbury Mountain, Romance and Monastery Mountains, and the existing Breadloaf and Lye Brook Wilderness Areas. Wilderness provides unparalleled backcountry recreational opportunities: hiking, hunting and fishing, as well as quiet and solitude. As the northeast continues to grow, these opportunities grow scarcer and scarcer.

A Disastrous Decision on ATVs

Today, there are no ATV trails on the Green Mountain National Forest, but plenty of opportunities to drive on private lands. Yet in every alternative in the draft plan, the agency proposes to open sections of the forest to ATVs.

ATVs cause severe damage to trees, plants, soils, streams and other water bodies. They damage trails, pollute the air and disturb wildlife. And they utterly destroy the tranquility and quiet that human-powered forest recreationists, and that is most of us, come to find.

The following information is from The Wilderness Society

“I believe it is important to make the hard decisions to protect areas of our gorgeous state as wilderness, in balance with maintaining land for agriculture and the forest industry. I strongly believe that we will be thanked by our children and theirs, for our wisdom and our ability to look out for them and generations to come.” - Nancy Gucker Birsall, Tinmouth, Vermont.

A Majestic View

From atop Glastenbury Mountain, visitors have a 360-degree view of the majestic Green Mountains of Vermont. This view, and the wild National Forest land that provides it, are threatened-by road-building, logging, cellular telephone towers and motorized recreation.

Glastenbury, and Vermont's other wildest places deserve permanent protection of their ecological and recreational values. That protection is the goal of the Vermont Wilderness Association (VWA). VWA is a coalition of 16 organizations, including The Wilderness Society, that, taken together, represent tens of thousands of Vermonters and actively seeks the designation of additional Wilderness on the Green Mountain National Forest.

A Tradition

Wilderness is part of Vermont's tradition and a valued part, according to polls of residents of the Green Mountain State. When the Forest Service asked in 1995, 80 percent of Vermonters said they want remaining undisturbed forests protected. Many have attended agency-sponsored forums and over 10.000 letters, postcards and comments have been signed in support of Wilderness protection. Letters to the editor also reflect broad support for additional designations.

And An Opportunity

Today, only about one percent of Vermont's land base is protected as Wilderness, some 60,000 acres. The Vermont Wilderness Association (VWA), of which The Wilderness Society is a part, proposes to double that amount with protection of another 60,000 acres, including some of the state's most spectacular wild areas such as Glastenbury Mountain and Lamb Brook.

The VWA proposal would also add acreage to several existing Wilderness areas, and would also create a new National Recreation Area in the Moosalamoo area. The National Recreation Area would be off limits to commercial logging but remain open to snowmobiling and other motorized recreation on existing roads and trails.

In developing its proposal, the VWA has looked to science that increasingly shows the need for Wilderness areas of at least 25,000 to 40,000 acres in size to adequately protect and restore a region's plant and animal diversity.

Wilderness areas east of the Mississippi average around 27,000 acres in size; New Hampshire has three that top 25,000 acres. Sadly, today Vermont has only one that even comes close: the Breadloaf Wilderness at 21,000 acres.