Hello friends of wild places! I represent Standing Trees at the Vermont Statehouse (you can read more about me here), and I wanted to give you an update on a few key bills in the Vermont Statehouse that have the potential to impact forests, wildlife, and our public lands. 2025 is the first year of the two-year legislative biennium, so it’s important to keep an eye on these bills even if they don’t make it over the finish line this year. We’ll continue to post legislative updates to our blog as these and other bills develop in the coming weeks and months.
Your support is crucial to protecting and restoring Vermont’s public forests and biodiversity. If you have any questions about the bills mentioned, or want more guidance to take action, please reach out to me at bobgalvin777@gmail.com. Not sure how to find your legislators? You can use this tool to find their contact information.
Bills we support:
H.276 (SUPPORT) - H.276, the Vermont Climate Resilience and State Wildlands Act, is one of the most exciting bills introduced this session. This bill would protect 268,000 acres of state land as permanently-protected wildlands, allowing forests all over the state to grow old. You can read more about this visionary bill on our blog here. Please take a second to reach out to Rep. Amy Sheldon of Middlebury at asheldon@leg.state.vt.us to express your sincere appreciation to her for introducing this visionary bill to protect wild places in Vermont.
S.38 (SUPPORT) - This bill proposes to require the Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources to create a funding mechanism, through the form of a voluntary stamp available at tax write-off time, for funding the creation and maintenance of habitat corridors and wildlife crossings in the state. Habitat connectivity is critical for wild places to retain the full suite of native species that allows them to function well and withstand the effects of climate change.
H.132 (SUPPORT) - This bill proposes to prohibit the use of bait piles to hunt furbearing animals like coyote, bobcat, and foxes in the State of Vermont. This bill not only protects these important wildlife species who play essential roles in Vermont’s ecosystems from being unfairly exploited, it also reduces the risk of wildlife being attracted to human habitation by bait piles, and protects domestic dogs who tragically have been mistaken for coyotes and killed over bait piles in the last year.
Bills we oppose:
H.70 (OPPOSE) - This bill would allow lands enrolled in the Use Value Appraisal Program (Current Use) to be included in the inventory of protected lands within Act 59, Vermont’s 30x30 and 50x50 law that was passed in 2023. We appreciate the Use Value Appraisal program, but it does not convey permanent legal protection. The goal of Act 59 is to ensure that lands are permanently protected from development or conversion, so this bill clearly violates the statutory goals of Act 59.
H.289 (OPPOSE) - This bill makes several substantive changes to weaken climate policy across the state of Vermont, and would roll back several important provisions of climate legislation that have passed in recent years. In particular, the bill would change state climate commitments to goals, and would weaken the Climate Council by removing key members and stakeholders from the conversation.
H.434 (OPPOSE) - This bill would, among other problematic things, require that lands purchased with Vermont Housing & Conservation Board funding be managed to allow timber harvest. The bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. William Greer, is a Democrat from Bennington and it would be helpful to kindly reach out to Rep. Greer and express your dissatisfaction with this bill at wgreer@leg.state.vt.us. It is unacceptable that public funding going to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board would automatically be spent in support of logging operations without any consideration of whether this land use makes sense for a given area.
H.477 (OPPOSE) - This bill mandates the Commissioner of Forests, Parks, and Recreation to develop a comprehensive plan to reduce delays in timber harvests on state forest lands. At a time of unprecedented pressure to log our public lands, Vermont does not need logging projects moving any faster than they already are.
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