Features Archive
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Editorial
We are lucky to live in Vermont, and not just for its incomparable beauty and its still largely rural character. We are fortunate also because we haven’t experienced the environmental battles that in other regions have torn communities apart. That is not to say that we are not faced with some very difficult natural resource and land use issues. Still,… (more)
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Another View
As an individual who derives a significant portion of his income from the utilization of wood products, I have more than a passing interest in the health and productivity of the forests of northern New England. I have watched passively over the years as the pendulum has swung from an industry largely unregulated to the exact opposite. What has led… (more)
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Burning Questions in Vermont’s Forests
It seems as though California is always on fire. More than 200,000 acres of it burned last year. And even in a relatively light fire-year like 1995 the pattern was much the same all over the west: wildfires ravaged over 400,000 acres in the great basin states, 300,000 acres in the southwest, and another 60,000 acres in the northwest. The… (more)
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Hot Spots: The Lamb Brook Decision
The three-year-old controversy over a proposed harvest in the Lamb Brook area of Green Mountain National Forest reached a new stage this past December, when U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha ordered the U.S. Forest Service to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) regarding the proposed cut. As this issue went to press, the Forest Service was pondering… (more)
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Springtime Courtship in Vernal Pools
On rainy spring nights, a silent group of rarely seen animals creep along the moist leaves for their annual rendeznous. Blue, yellow and black, brown and green, these travelers are amphibians that spend most of their lives on or beneath the forest floor, but in the spring they return to their natal pool to mate and reproduce. Their journey brings… (more)
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Whole Tree Chipping
The first time you follow a tractor trailer with a container that has vents on the side and only half of a rear door, you wonder what it’s carrying. By the time you see a few more you know that it’s carrying whole tree chips, so you wonder where they’re working. The complete content of this article is part of… (more)
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Keeping a Place for Vermont’s Bobcats
There in the snow was the track of a large bobcat. Groups of stalking tracks, hugging tight to cover provided by trees and woody shrubs, were interspersed with slow walking tracks, allowing us to “read” this wildcats’s stealthy stalk over 20 yards. Then, we could see that from a motionless crouch the bobcat jumped, ran, then jumped again to land… (more)
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Editorial
Last winter the Vermont legislature revived the Forest Resources Advisory Council (FRAC), a body first established in 1976, but which had been inactive for many years. Public alarm about a spate of forest liquidations was the immediate cause for its rebirth, but the council was asked for its recommendations on a number of important policy issues affecting the future of… (more)
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What the Wildflowers Say
Wildflowers, ferns, mosses and mushrooms narrate a rich story of the woods. They provide clues about climate, they disclose long forgotten tales of hardscabble farms, and they tell us worlds about soils and nutrients. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable pdf of this issue, available in our online shop.
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Another View
My forestry and wildlife consulting business has changed over the past few years because I have had more frequent requests by clients to remove nuisance animals. Many of these people are puzzled that they are having problems now, when they never have been bothered in the past. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable pdf of… (more)