URGENT: Help Protect Vermont's Farms and Forests

The Legislature is now considering a policy that would undermine a crucial land conservation program that supports Vermont’s rural economy. Attempting to fill a budget gap, lawmakers are looking to make a significant and sudden shift in Vermont’s long-standing policy to protect and enhance our world-renowned farms, forests, and working landscape. Make your voice heard on this important issue!

Important Farm, Forest Conservation Measure Becomes Law

Legislation to improve Vermont's Current Use Program was enacted into law on June 10, 2008. The bill makes several targeted improvements to the administration of the popular and broadly-supported 30-year-old program, also known as the Use Value Appraisal Program. Current use is widely credited with helping keep Vermont's farms and forests viable, well-managed and intact by taxing land at its use value rather than its higher development value.

Technical Assistance to Communities

VNRC is working to develop creative new planning and zoning strategies in Vermont to promote forestland conservation and reduce forest fragmentation and parcelization. We are reviewing forestland conservation planning strategies that exist in the state and developing new planning templates for municipalities. VNRC is available to assist communities on this issue in several ways.

VNRC Wins Important National Victory for Wildlife, Forests

The nation’s national forest lands and wildlife are safer now, thanks in large part to a lawsuit filed by VNRC and other leading environmental groups. In an exciting victory, a federal court judge on March 30, 2007 put the brakes on the Bush administration’s implementation of its environmentally harmful forest planning regulations.

VNRC Helps Safeguard Critical Bear Habitat

VNRC successfully halted a plan by Central Vermont Public Service Corporation (CVPS) to build a new utility line through a regionally important black bear travel corridor known as the “Sage Hill Corridor” in Stratton and Jamaica. In an important decision which makes a strong statement about the value of protecting fragile natural areas as important habitat for wildlife, the District Environmental Commission #2 denied CVPS’s motion to alter the decision last week.

Activists, Sportsmen, Others Pull Together for Vermont's Wildlife

The Vermont Wildlife Partnership, a non-traditional coalition of 36 organizations that includes VNRC, The Nature Conservancy and the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen, is urging lawmakers to secure long-term funding for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, which finds itself increasingly stretched financially.

The coalition supports the recommendations made by the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Task Force, a group appointed by the Governor last year to investigate alternatives and make recommendations on sustainable funding sources.

Decision in Halifax Case Important Precedent, Conservation Win

A recent ruling by a state court that two backcountry trails in the Town of Halifax could not be reclassified to public roads will have important implications for the rural southern Vermont community and other towns working to control sprawl. The decision will help make rural lands along trails, which include significant wildlife habitat, working forests and recreational opportunities, less vulnerable to development.

Tom Slayton on the Proposed Rule Allowing ATVs on State Lands

Landowner Summit

Landowner Summit -- Saturday, April 30

Anyone who owns woodlands, and wants them to be well-managed into the future, faces a challenging question: how can owners and managers of forests establish a legacy for Vermont’s woodlands so they remain part of our landscape for years to come?

A daylong Landowner Summit on April 30 in Fairlee is designed to help provide an answer to this question.