As the chestnut-sided warbler flits about the quaking aspen trees under the shadow of Birdseye Mountain in Castleton, Vermonters can hunt, fish, trap, birdwatch and trek in perpetuity along the nearly 5,000 acres of land conserved by the state, thanks to a now-completed conservation plan, state officials say.
After eight years, the Department of Fish & Wildlife finished drafting last month its long-term plan for the land in Castleton, comprising the Birdseye and Blueberry Hill Wildlife Management Areas, according to the department’s state and private lands biologist Travis Hart. Like a quilt, Hart said, the state aims to stitch together a “patchwork” of different habitats to ensure species diversity and connectivity through permanent conservation efforts.
The wildlife management areas situated in the Taconic Mountains bring together a unique mixture of plant and animal species and landscape features, providing a “critical link for wildlife and ecological processes across Route 4” to the Green Mountain National Forest, said John Austin, director of wildlife for the department.
Over the next 20 years, Hart said the department plans to manage 4% of the Castleton land for ephemeral young growth forests while actively promoting the development of old growth forests on 24% of the land. The state lost much of its old growth forest during European settlement and logging for agriculture in the 1800s, and now conservationists are taking varied approaches to grow back the old growth trees, knowing their work will not come to fruition for decades if not generations.
This is one of many conservation milestones in southern Vermont in recent months, guided by Fish & Wildlife’s Vermont Conservation Design, which plans out the landscape for ecological functions, said Robert Zaino, a natural community ecologist with the department.
The areas contribute to the state’s overall conservation goal outlined in Act 59, a 2023 law that aims to permanently conserve 30% of land in Vermont by 2030, said Rebecca Washburn, director of lands administration and recreation for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
The state had already conserved 27% of land as of last year, Washburn said. Looking to fill the 3% gap in the next five years, Washburn said that departments within the Agency of Natural Resources, alongside conservation groups and land acquisition partners, are looking to invest in tracts of land that promote species connectivity, biodiversity and ecological community resilience.
Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, the main sponsor of Act 59, said the legislative intent was to ensure that the range of nine biophysical regions in the state are all addressed through different conservation models, including improving biodiversity, engaging sustainable forestry and resource management and allowing some lands to grow wild without human interference.
For Sheldon, Act 59 — the Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act — was born out of a recognition that “we need to turn the ship in order to make sure we don’t miss opportunities to conserve all of our natural communities before it’s too late.”
Through Vermont Conservation Design’s statewide mapping tool, BioFinder, Zaino said the state identifies which forest blocks serve as the highest priority “stepping stones” that help species move across the regional landscape between the Berkshires in Massachusetts, the Adirondacks in New York, the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Gaspé Peninsula across the national border in Quebec.
Vermont’s southern region has relatively little permanently conserved land other than the federal Green Mountain National Forest, Zaino said. The state’s work with conservation partners to acquire high-priority tracts for permanent conservation is an effort to “safeguarding places that we know have this very high ecological value into the future.”
Partners acquiring land for ‘connectivity pathways’
One such effort the state and the Conservation Fund completed this summer focused on a patchwork of land in the Chateauguay Forest.
In June, the state was awarded $2.9 million in federal Forest Legacy Program funds to purchase and manage five parcels, said Kate Sudhoff, land conservation program manager for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
This includes nearly 900 acres on Sable Mountain in Stockbridge, which will be added to the Les Newell Wildlife Management Area, and the Long Hill and Chase Corners parcels in Reading totalling nearly 800 acres that will be added to the Calvin Coolidge State Forest. Sudhoff said the state is still working to purchase two more conservation easement parcels in Bridgewater and Killington with the federal funding.
The three plots are situated within the state’s oldest regional conservation initiative, the Chateauguay No Town Conservation Project.
Will Duane, land acquisition coordinator for Fish & Wildlife, said the Sable Mountain, Long Hill and Chase Corners parcels are higher elevation areas that lead to a menagerie of biodiversity on the landscape. The three plots are also critical “puzzle pieces” to build out protected natural areas for species movement as the state manages the land for public recreation, wildlife habitat and as a working landscape, Duane said.
“We’re creating these connectivity pathways and these corridors for species to move back and forth, and the Sable Mountain piece is in a huge critical core habitat block in Stockbridge right there in the heart of the Green Mountains,” Duane said.
Sally Manikian, the New Hampshire and Vermont director of The Conservation Fund, said the “organizing force” behind permanently conserved tracts of land was expanding public access to outdoor recreation along the skinny and vulnerable corridor of the Appalachian Trail connecting the Green Mountain National Forest to the White Mountains.
Another state partner, the Trust for Public Land, has also made strides toward the state’s goals, permanently conserving 500 acres at the gateway of the Robert T. Stafford White Rocks National Recreation Area near the Appalachian Trail in Wallingford in March.
Shelby Semmes, the Vermont and New Hampshire state director of the trust, said the group is in the early stages of acquiring three parcels totaling over 300 acres in Dorset, which is a part of a partnership with the Vermont Huts & Trails to create a long-distance mountain biking “Velomont” trail.
The project on the Dorset ridgeline is particularly valuable, Semmes said, because half the land is located across the Rich Northern Harwood Forest and it will conserve habitat around the northeast’s largest cave and bat hibernation site — the Dorset Bat Cave.
In the small rural town of Jamaica, the Northeast Wilderness Trust is taking a different approach to permanent land conservation.
In August, the trust bought 600 acres of land for the College Hill Wilderness Sanctuary near Stratton Mountain and the Green Mountain National Forest in Windham County, which will remain permanently conserved as a “forever wild,” Northeast Wilderness Trust President and CEO Jon Leibowitz said.
“Forever-wild conservation is a commitment that people make to a particular piece of land where we allow nature to have the freedom to evolve in a way that it directs the ebb and flow of life rather than people managing or manipulating a forest,” Leibowitz said.
Duane said that fragmentation across the landscape makes it more difficult for species to move about, so the work of the state and conservation groups is to strategically create throughways for wildlife.
“We’re just day-by-day trying to chip away the gaps in these really important wildlife corridors,” Duane said.
