Climate Crisis Spawns a Push to Ban Logging in the Green Mountain National Forest

Karen Bixler made her way down a steep logging road deep in the Green Mountains last week, a bright rainbow on her floppy hat and a dark scowl on her face. The Bethel resident had spent the previous hour listening to U.S. Forest Service staffers explain why they had allowed loggers to clear-cut a nearby 10-acre swath of forest two years ago.

Removing nearly all the trees from designated areas creates patches of new forest that quickly regenerate into vital wildlife habitat, the experts told Bixler and about 30 others who toured the site in the town of Chittenden. Forester James Donahey and his colleagues explained that "early successional" forests provide tender new growth favored by moose and deer, fruiting bushes that feed bears, and refuge for birds and wildlife to raise their young.

Bixler wasn't buying it.

"I think it's bullshit," she said as she steadied herself with a hiking pole to navigate the rutted dirt road that led away from the logging site. Forests need to be left alone to recover from the beating they've taken at the hands of man, not logged more intensively — no matter how that's dressed up and justified, Bixler said.

But more logging is exactly what the Green Mountain National Forest is facing over the next decade. Stands that haven't been cut in the better part of a century are reaching maturity — from an economic perspective, anyway.

Read more: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/climate-crisis-spawns-a-push-to-ban-logging-in-the-green-mountain-national-forest/Content?oid=33631956