 |
|
Editor:
Hardy Macia wrote a letter to OITM encouraging opposition to the now (presumably) authorized legislative appropriation of $4.5 million toward purchase of the Champion lands of Essex County. I joined several groups encouraging Vermont's Governor and Legislature to spend another $6 million to buy the timber rights on the 85,000 acres that the Conservation Fund and Vermont Land Trust propose to sell to timber companies.
The Libertarian philosophy ignores the biodiversity protections which public involvement could ensure on the Champion lands. An auctioning of these lands to the highest bidder and their subsequent parcelization would have been a terrible loss not just for the Northeast Kingdom, but for all of Vermont. Moreover, as one who is fairly intimate with these woods as well as the economic challenges of living in the area, I don't think a strictly Libertarian view would make for increased economic opportunity here.
Conservation pays dividends beyond clean air, water and the experience of remote places. Towns like Island Pond, Canaan, and Bloomfield will have increased economic opportunities if the special values of the Champion lands are protected and restored. These include not just rare creatures such as the lynx or catamount — necessary top predators — but also old growth forest.
Although cut over today, when I was a teenager there were still an occasional yellow birch or red spruce of truly awesome size-and if we let something grow, our grandchildren could enjoy what old timers used to talk about — big trees and a wild landscape.
In fact, what came out of the Legislature was a fairly poor commitment to values other than "the working forest" and recreation. Unfortunately the debate was led by property rights ideologues to whom moderates made no response, a perhaps familiar scenario. That is why we called for a greater commitment, one that included Wilderness (certainly not to the exclusion of logging) and biodiversity protections in both logged and non-logged areas. While appreciative of what has been accomplished thus far, the question for the future is, why shouldn't the wildest corner of Vermont enjoy what the rest of the state has in its Green Mountain National Forest?
Andrew Whittaker
editor of The Northern Forest Forum
Lancaster NH
