 This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positive League, Vermont. This is our first show of the new year and we are going to be exploring a very interesting organization in our state called the Nature Conservancy. Conservancy and my special guest is Heather Furman who was the State Director of the Nature Conservancy and we're going to be exploring all that the organization has done in its history certain issues that it's facing now and most importantly how you can help in its work. Welcome, Heather. Thank you, Dennis. It's great to be here. I'm here and just tell us if you were a little bit about yourself. Don't be shocked. Sure. Sure. So as you've said, my name is Heather Furman. I'm the State Director for the Vermont chapter of the Nature Conservancy. I have been living in Vermont for about 25 years and I've been the State Director at the Nature Conservancy for almost nine. I went to UVM. I graduated from UVM's graduate program at the Rubinstein School and I studied natural resource planning. So I'm really excited to be able to apply what I studied to the work that I do every single day. Great. Well, tell us about the organization itself, its history and what its mission is. Sure. So the Nature Conservancy was founded in 1951 by a group of ecologists, scientists in New England, in New York and we over our 70-year history we have been conserving some of the most special places around the world. Today we are in around 76 countries, so we partner with organizations in countries around the world and as a science-based, science-driven organization, we bring research, we bring science to apply it to the conservation work that we're doing to protect our lands and waters. In the US, most people know us for our history of land conservation. We've protected about 125 million acres of land in the US. And in 1961, our Vermont chapter was founded and it's a very homegrown, local chapter. It was founded by Hub Vogelman at the University of Vermont. And for a long time it was volunteer-led, a group of really passionate conservationists got together, worked to conserve places like Shelburne Farms and Bar Hill up in Greensboro. And over the years, we have become the second largest private landowner in the state of Vermont. And so today we own and manage 58 natural areas around the state. There's probably one in your hometown or at least in your county. We operate our natural areas for public access, for their ecological values, for climate resilience. And we allow the public to use our properties. We have what we call flagship areas. We have 11 flagship areas, places like Raven Ridge in Moncton and Charlotte, where we support public access. So at Raven Ridge, for example, we've put in a universally accessible boardwalk so that everyone can access the property and experience the beauty of nature. And we often have work days and field days and opportunities for school groups and researchers to come out and learn about the ecology of the place or just experience the beauty of nature. So I encourage everyone to experience our natural areas. It's something that we're really proud of at the Nature Conservancy. And today we continue to protect lands. When I say protect lands, I mean we conserve them by either buying them and owning and managing them for all of the things that we care about for climate resilience, for public access, for clean water. Or we partner with our other organizations to conserve lands. And something that I'm really proud of is that the Nature Conservancy has had a hand in helping the state of Vermont acquire new state parks, new state forests, wildlife management areas we work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. So in fact, we've helped protect about 23% of all of our state-owned lands today. We've worked for a long time with our government agencies so that the lands that we have helped protect are in the public domain and available to everyone. So we're really proud of that. In total, we've probably protected over 300,000 acres in Vermont. And you can find the hand of the Nature Conservancy all across the state in that work. That's great. Just to get very basic here, how is a natural area defined? Is it the void of any development or is it partially developed? Just give us an overview of that concept because I think it's important. Yeah, so thank you for that. We protect land for all kinds of reasons, right? Sometimes we protect land so that we can continue to operate it as a working forest, you know, to harvest timber, to supply wood products to people and to industries. Natural areas in Vermont are protected typically to protect really special ecological values. Maybe there's a rare and endangered species or there's a habitat type that is really unique and special to Vermont. So historically, as a science-based organization, we've identified these areas in Vermont that are pretty special. And we have worked to protect those for the natural values that are there. What we have learned over time is that many of the places that we have conserved also happen to be really important for what we call climate resilient lands. So climate resilient lands are areas where maybe the topography, the diversity in species, the microclimates are supporting a rich tapestry of biology. And as the climate changes, it's really important that species are able to move and colonize new areas. And so we need protected habitats. We need protected areas that are connected together to allow species movement across the landscape. And so when I say natural area, these are kind of what I think of as like strongholds for species to be able to meet all of their life needs, as well as adapt in the face of climate change to move to new ranges to have all the habitat available that that species needs as the climate changes. So typically, there's no human development there, but there is opportunity for the public to use those properties. We open all of our properties for hunting and fishing and hiking and cross-country skiing. And so it's a blend of being able to protect the variety and diversity of nature as well as give people a place to go and really see something special. I remember our immediate last governor, Peter Shumlin, when he took office talking about climate change being one of the most difficult issues that he and the administration would face. And it is now all over the news, of course, as it should be. Tell us a little bit about climate change and the impact on Vermont from your experience. Yeah, so many ways in which we're seeing the effects of climate change. So recently, we partnered with the University of Vermont to look at the effects of climate change on Vermont. And I'll give you a link to the website of the 2021 Vermont Climate Assessment. And this assessment just looks at what are we seeing as the climate changes, as what are the impacts on our environment, on our communities. And one of the things that we learned is that the rate at which we're experiencing major flood events is increasing. Vermont is becoming warmer and wetter. You wouldn't know that today. But overall, Vermont is becoming warmer and wetter. And we are experiencing 1.4 major flood disasters per year, which is an increase of about 20% over historic rates of flooding and impacts due to climate change. So the other thing that is affecting our communities is that over the history of our development in Vermont, we have straightened our rivers. And so as we are experiencing this warmer and wetter climate, the frequency of those floods and the velocity of the floodwaters. It's really starting to impact our communities in ways that put a lot of Vermonters at risk. And so one of the most important things that we could do is to protect our river corridors from encroaching development. And because one of the biggest impacts during the flood is that somebody gets flooded out. You've seen this, you saw this with Irene. You're seeing it more and more during these summer floods. Our roads get washed out. Our bridges get washed out. Sometimes homes get flooded. And so knowing that that is going to continue this trend around increased flood events. And because of the history of our straightened rivers, those floodwaters are moving that much faster and the impacts are that much greater. So by protecting our river corridors, and I mean like conserving and restoring our river corridors with natural vegetation and restoring wetlands and our flood plains, that activity can actually slow floodwaters. So you think of a river and it's cruising down the mountain and it needs somewhere to go. There's velocity there during a big rainstorm. And if that river can access its floodplain and flood that floodplain and there's plants and trees to absorb those floodwaters and those sediments, it's going to slow that river down and the impacts will be much less downstream. So it's something that the Nature Conservancy is working really hard on, both from a policy perspective as well as actually getting in there and restoring our floodplains, using our science to understand how to restore these floodplains in a cost-efficient way that keeps invasive species out, that provides habitat and brings back some wetlands for birds and I don't know my life. Sounds like a very big and a very important job. Can you just give us an idea of the scope of your organization in terms of personnel and outreach individuals? I know you talked about scientists and perhaps I guess environmental consultants, but just give us an idea. You're based in Montpelier. Just give us an idea of the scope of your organization because that'll fit into how people can help. Sure, absolutely. So we are a chapter in an organization that has a chapter about every state, very homegrown kind of local chapters. And our team in Vermont, we have about 25 people on staff. And we have folks working on our land conservation work, on our water work, as well as in the policy and climate arenas. We have a communications team and we have a fundraising team as well. We rely on both public and private dollars to support our work and we do offer many opportunities for people to engage with us. We host events and field outings and so folks can get involved with us by just coming to one of our events and seeing some of these wonderful natural areas that we've helped to protect or they can volunteer for us. And we've got lots of work going on on our properties. If you really like to tackle and pull invasive species or you want to help us build a trail or a boardwalk, we can certainly use your help. That's great. We have a very excellent website and we're going to publish that along with the video. And I noticed there are a number of projects that are ongoing or coming up. Could you describe some of those, such as the Artist in Residence Project and the Forest Garment Project, things like that? Yeah, sure. Yes, we've worked with an artist in residence over the course of the last year, Elizabeth Billings. And she has done a number of installations actually on our natural areas. You can go see them. She built a beautiful bench at La Platt River Preserve in Shelburne. And she's installed a landscape, I don't even know how to describe it. It's just a landscape installation. You're kind of walking through the woods and you kind of come up on this piece of artwork in the forest at Raven Ridge. And also down at our Equinox Natural Area down in Manchester. So you can go see the work that she has done there. We did that work to, you know, everybody during COVID has taken to the woods for a little bit of reprieve early on in COVID. Folks didn't have a lot of places to go when we were all in quarantine. And so the public began using our natural areas as well as other parks and trails. And we saw an incredible uptick in the use of our lands. And so we wanted to give people just something special to see in the woods, a place of contemplation. We had a lot of artists visit the woods and it was really nice to be engaging with different communities. And just as a way to say thank you to everyone who's helped support us and endured the quarantine last year. So that was really great. The other project you mentioned is our forest carbon work and forest carbon. That is simply the ability of trees to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. So of course we're all aware of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions out there. And one of the ways that the Nature Conservancy is working to mitigate that is by managing our forest to absorb more carbon. And we're working in southern Vermont as well as northern Vermont with landowners to enroll their lands into what is known as forest carbon. This is a voluntary market that organizations, institutions, companies can buy carbon credits. And so as we manage our lands for carbon, those carbon credits become available for purchase. And it incentivizes and is actually a way for forest landowners to have another revenue stream coming in to their, you know, they need revenue to own and manage land. So forest carbon markets offer another revenue stream for forest landowners. So it's exciting because we've worked in the Cold Hollow Mountains with our partners, Vermont Land Trust and Cold Hollow to Canada to aggregate landowners together so they can enroll their land into the carbon market together. And we are beginning to work in southern Vermont to enroll forest landowners in a program called Family Forest Carbon, which essentially helps give landowners the resources, the tools, the techniques and the support to manage their land for more carbon absorption and actually achieve a revenue stream for that. So it's pretty exciting. That is. I just want to ask you now, since the legislature is in session and Congress is in session, what advocacy issues are you concerned about and how people can help? Yeah, so one of the most important ones is what we talked about earlier. I think there is legislation being introduced to help protect our river corridors. It's really important that we get a handle around on development in our river corridors. As I said, for all of the reasons, we don't want to see communities continue to be flooded out. We don't want property loss. That increases tax dollars in recovery. And so protecting our river corridors by excluding development from those critical flood plains is something that we care deeply about and we want to see it advanced forward. The other really important policy action that we take every year is to support the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, VHCB is one of our most important funding sources in the state for getting land conserved and having these places, really important places protected for communities. And that's everything from protecting farmland to protecting recreation land to protecting our wetlands and flood plains to support water quality. So VHCB is funded through the Vermont Property Transfer Tax and we strongly support full funding for VHCB for both affordable housing as well as for all of the conservation projects that the Nature Conservancy and our partners work on around the state. Great. Well, one of the things that we like to do here on Positively Vermont is tell people how they can help. What do you need? Funding, volunteers, people for call representatives, just let us conclude with your wishes for people what they can do if they want to know what they can do. Because I believe you have piqued our interest and there's plenty of great stuff on the website and we're going to publish that. But tell us how people can help. Yeah, there's so many ways. Obviously, we're a member based organization as a nonprofit. We love, we would love to have you as a member support us as a member, you can go online. You can come right into our Montpelier, well, maybe not right now, you can't come into Montpelier office, but you can send us support to our Montpelier office and we would be exceedingly grateful for that. If you have forest land that you are interested in conserving or you want to manage it for habitat and biodiversity or for forest carbon, get in touch with us. We're helping and supporting landowners to enroll or to manage their land for forest carbon. We can always use volunteers. We are, as I mentioned earlier, as the second largest private landowner in the state, we've got a lot of land to own and manage and we have a wonderful volunteer coordinator who helps us track all of our interested folks and match them up with opportunities all around the state. A lot of that work happens in the spring, summer and fall, but we're in the process of planning for those activities now, so if you'd like to volunteer with us, we'd love to have your support there. That is wonderful. Well, thank you very much Heather, you've really been an excellent guest. There's so much more to this and hopefully people will look into the website and see some of those very interesting videos on that. And we will keep in touch and let us know what's going on as the year progresses. Wonderful Dennis. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you very much again, Heather, and this is Dennis McMahon for Positively Vermont. Our guest has been Heather Furman, the State Director of the Nature Conservancy, and thank you for watching.