Why More Vermont Wilderness?

The dense forests that blanket Vermont are a source of great pride for our state and are revered throughout the world. Our forests provide us with many of the traditions that make up the character of Vermont - maple sugaring, skiing, hunting and fishing, working landscapes, solitude and wilderness.

VNRC supports a mosaic of different management types to promote different types of habitat and recreational use throughout Vermont. We support managed forests and wilderness areas. We believe that portions of our public lands should provide opportunities for sustainable forestry that is geared towards benefiting the local economy. We also strongly believe that large segment's of Vermont's most wild spaces - many of which are in the Green Mountain National Forest - should be set aside strictly for their ecological values. Wilderness areas provide more than just non-motorized backcountry recreation areas for hikers, hunters, anglers and skiers. Wilderness areas also provide opportunities to restore and conserve native biodiversity and wildlife habitat, extraordinary natural beauty and to protect water quality.

Wilderness is also important because, as Vermont’s landscape continues to be carved up into smaller and smaller pieces, large, remote, wild spaces have and will continue to become harder and harder to find. VNRC’s support of more wilderness complements our work to support sustainable timber harvesting and to curb the rate that Vermont’s forested, working landscapes fall to new development. Read more about our 'Forest Fragmentation' campaign and our effort to advance new strategies and incentives to help landowners hold onto their forested land here.

VNRC also joins more than a dozen Vermont and Northeastern-based organizations advocating for more wilderness in the Vermont Wilderness Association. In 2001 the VWA advanced a proposal that maximizes net benefits of wilderness protection on the Green Mountain National Forest while also reducing conflict as much as possible. The VWA proposal called for the creation of 78,000 acres of new Wilderness areas, 45,000 acres in two new National Recreation Areas (where snowmobiling would not be restricted) and 15,000 acres in three new national conservation areas on the Green Mountain National Forest. Currently 1 percent of Vermont is wilderness. The VWA proposal would have doubled Vermont's wilderness lands to 2 percent of the state's total land mass.

The VWA Wilderness proposal called for:

• The creation of the 35,000 acre Glastenbury Mountain Wilderness: Woodford, Glastenburg, Sunderland
• The creation of the 5,000 acre Lamb Brook Wilderness: Readsboro and Searsburg
• The creation of the 15,000 acre Romance Mountain Wilderness: Hancock and Rochester
  Read the Forest Service's announcements for the meetings
• Increasing the Lye Brook Wilderness from 15,847 acres to 25,000 acres: Sunderland, Stratton, Winhall
• The creation of the 3,500 acre Abbey Pond National Conservation Area: Middlebury, Ripton and Bristol
• The creation of the 4,700 acre Cape National Conservation Area: Chittenden and Goshen
• The creation of the 7,200 acre Moosalamoo National Recreation Area: Salisbury, Leicester and Ripton
• The creation of the 38,000 acre Robert Stafford National Recreation Area: Stratton, Somerset, Searsburg and Woodford