#ThinkVermont

Vermonters care deeply about forests — for clean water, wildlife, recreation, climate resilience, locally sourced wood, and the very character of the places we call home. That shared concern helps explain the appeal of H.276, a proposal to designate large areas of state land as “wildlands.” But as introduced, the bill would move Vermont in the wrong direction — not because it values forests too much, but because it defines conservation too narrowly. Vermont’s public lands are already conservation lands. They are managed to serve multiple public purposes at once: ecological integrity, climate resilience, recreation, education, research and thoughtful stewardship of forests as living systems. For decades, Vermont state forests have been managed under a multiple-use framework grounded in science, public input and transparency. …H.276 would replace that diversified approach with a rigid mandate that prohibits all active forest management — including ecological forestry — on large areas of our existing state lands.