©US Forest Service

A new logging plan for the Green Mountain National Forest could harvest almost 5 million cubic feet of timber, or enough trees to fill 5,000 school buses. The Telephone Gap Integrated Resource project was approved on June 13 after seven years of assessment. It will manage 72,000 acres of federal, state and private land primarily in the towns of Brandon, Chittenden, Goshen, Killington, Mendon, Pittsfield and Pittsford, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Final Decision Notice, a document outlining the new plan. The Forest Service said in its final plan that the Telephone Gap project would improve wildlife habitat, restore soils and wetlands, allow for prescribed burns and trail building and increase logging. But the project has received both praise and pushback from environmental organizations in Vermont over the last few years of its development.