 Good morning and welcome to the Vermont Legislature's House Committee on Environment and Energy. This morning we will be taking up H-126, Act Related to Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection. And we have with us this morning all four of our witnesses in the Zoom room will welcome Matt Bretton, Backcountry Hunting and Anglers. Welcome, Mr. Bretton. Good morning. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. My name is Matt Bretton. I live in Charleston, Vermont. And I'm here representing BHA where I serve as a chapter board member and a state co-chair. BHA is a North American organization focused on ensuring our heritage of hunting and fishing in a natural setting through education and work on behalf of wild public land, waters and wildlife. In Vermont, we focus on stewardship, access and opportunity on public lands, as well as other lands and waters open to hunting and fishing. I'm here to make sure hunters and anglers are part of the process, which H-126 starts and remind the committee that much of the conservation accomplished in the last century was done on the backs and through the wallets of hunters, anglers, and trappers. We have licensed sales, Pittman Robertson funds, Dingle Johnson money have helped protect more than 130,000 acres in the state in the form of wildlife management areas and boat launches. Duck Stamp sales have funded 33,000 acres of national wildlife refuges, among other different various forms of public land in the state. In 2020, 141,000 romaners purchased hunting and fishing licenses. So these are a large part of our constituency here. The second largest sector of the recreation economy with fishing and building and their associated activities the fifth largest. So when we start talking about the economics of conservation, this is a big deal as well. On principle, BHA supports the 30 by 30 conservation goal. We want to be part of an objective science driven stakeholder engaged process to determine the appropriate level of management actions needed to meet biodiversity conservation goals. We want to make sure our state constitutionally right to hunt and foul as well as fish on an enclosed lands and waters is protected throughout this process. We want to access an opportunity on some conserved lands in the past, and don't want us to become the norm in situations of public private partnerships to achieve the goals of 30 by 30. We have taught the focus on wildlife and connectivity corridors as well as the emphasis on reduce fragmentation. This is all very important for a variety of wildlife species, not just the, the game that we chase. The first our BHA members love the tracks of relatively remote country of wandering. It's sort of the nature of, of what we do, and why we have back country in our name, though they're increasingly rare in the state and certainly deserve some protection and some focus. As an organization we're also very happy to see the inclusion of water protection in this bill right here in the endless and watershed certainly deserves some attention. We support the emphasis on Vermont conservation design principles. The current language language of each 126 seems to emphasize ecological reserves and passive management as part of the directive to the secretary of they can are referring to Vermont conservation design this category is only one of several that we should focus on young forests, shrub lands and grasslands are also identified as high priority areas. The language of this bill matters. We feel it should mirror the language in Vermont conservation design to keep things simple and clear for all citizens of Vermont, and that the particular emphasis on those areas, while important should be removed as a directive. There's also some direction in the bill that land for fee acquisition as well as state lands should be looked at and targeted for ecological reserves and passive management. This conservation work should be broad based, and these things shouldn't be predetermined. We should let the good goals and directives aimed at the secretary and the professionals and stakeholders drive the conservation plan rather than providing too much direction. One direction or another state lands may be a mechanism by which we can have a lot of habitat types and focusing on just those things may not be appropriate. There's an opportunity in this process of trying to achieve 30 by 30 where we can bring a lot of people together to do good work. There are many versions of conservation that have value from the trapper who catching the raccoon that might prey on the nest of a spiny soft belt turtle in the wetland to the land owner who waits to most field until the monarch butterflies have departed to the land owner who's managing timber for most wildlife and local forest products. These things have value and deep roots in the state and need to be monitored and maintained as part of this process in these goals. The anglers and trappers have been part of the conservation conversation for generations, but we don't want to rest on our laurels. We look forward to a continued participation in the process of 30 by 30 of protecting and managing a landscape that we care deeply about. Not just as observers, but as participants who obtain sustenance from the land. The devil of this entire process is in the details, as has been said before, if we should focus on our shared values, we can make amazing things happen. That's the bulk of my comments. I'm happy to take any questions or participate in a discussion. Thank you for your testimony representative civilian. Thank you, Mr Bretton and this is a new topic. So, so learning just different terminology. You use the words land for fee. What does that mean. And so I'm not a professional in this work I'm a volunteer and so the professionals may speak more directly to it but to my understanding see for acquisition is basically just money that we spend money that we spend to buy land. And, and that was pointed out in the bill or something in particular around that ecological reserve. So to clarify it's actually a directive in the bill to have have this plan consider the role of lands already owned by the state outright in fee. That's what landed fee means you own the whole parcel of rights. That's the plan to go with that way. That's the plan to look at their role in meeting. I'm from a man I'm sure I have one other question. So, I also heard you talk about some conserved lands that have become closed off for hunting and I wanted to ask you about that I where I live. I have folks that hunt to eat. And we also have a lot of conserved lands. And so I just want to understand the dynamic of when concerns and become hunters and, and I don't know if you're, I'll let you speak to whether or not you're the right person to do it yourself from our standpoint, different organizations, non governmental organizations conservation groups, and obtain lands and manage them and they certainly have every right to do so. In some of those cases, we've seen hunting either certain types of hunting band or not allowed different levels of trespass and permissions and that sort of thing, and that's certainly within their rights. But in general, I think as we move forward with hundreds and anglers as one group among many, we want to make sure that we, we try to keep in mind that we're using land to hunt on and losing access to land to hunt on across the state and, and my point of emphasis would just be that we want to try to keep as much of that open to our user group as possible. So I'm hearing you say that property owners or new property owners that are putting their land in conservation are banning that it's in some ways. Groups have done that. And it just depends on the whole process and it's all perfectly legal and within their rights. And so this is this process, especially if there's any, you know, state money that sort of thing you just want to make sure that hunting and fishing or and trapping are generally allowed on those properties as we look forward to obtaining new lands. Okay, and so this is, this is it for me man. Okay, I just want to make sure I'm understanding even more so you're saying if public dollars are being used to purchase lands to preserve hunting and fishing on it. There are some legal stipulations around public money, oftentimes that sort of thing. But I think it just deserves watching and consideration as we look at where we consider land moving forward. Thank you. Other questions for members. Thank you for your testimony this morning. Thanks for having me have a great day. All right, next we will welcome Ryan Robozo from the Vermont Center for Eco studies. Good morning. Thank you chair Sheldon for the invitation, like to thank the committee for spending some time carving out testimony on this bill for myself and others and accommodating the remote nature of our testimony would have loved to have been there in person with you today. So I'm Dr. Ron Robozo director of conservation science for the Vermont Center for Eco studies at the Vermont Center for Eco studies where research nonprofit. We like to think that science powers conservation so our attempts to address ecological questions in the state and region really haven't applied focus we want to make sure our work can inform land managers rule makers policymakers like themselves I can put these things into practice. I myself I'm an ecologist I've worked mostly on rare plants and disturbance adaptive systems so trying to understand how populations and communities responds to different forms of management and disturbances. I'd like to start out by sharing what I think that the main point I'd like to communicate is and that is climate change is really shifting the way we need to think about biodiversity conservation, particularly the scale in which we have to think about biodiversity conservation. This has been true for some time. But you know we've kind of moved away from the idea that you know just identifying specific habitats or areas that host species were interested in and protecting those areas really completes the job. We recognize that species are going to shift their distributions within the state and also in and out of the state. As we have maintained levels of biodiversity we think we'll make the state resilience we really need to expand the scale of biodiversity conservation. I think that's what this bill is attempting to do when we think about these these kind of large numbers 3050% of the state in conservation. And it's really just one of several strategies that should be on the table for for really addressing this large scale biodiversity issue. I'll recognize also that the this the committee had heard testimony last session back when it was H 606 on this bill and knowing that this is a new look committee I'll just mention that that you know past testimony from experts in the state including a colleague of mine Kent McFarland also from the Vermont Center for Eco studies I think did a great job of highlighting a few things when thinking about what this bill might do for biodiversity. First of all highlighting why biodiversity conservation is of importance to begin with right and I think the good way to think about this is in terms of ecosystem services. A phrase we come to use more and more often. You know some of these services are maybe difficult to identify or value or wrap our minds around. I think that highly functional healthy systems provide us a suite of services that include things like carbon storage, carbon sequestration things that can mitigate climate change, oxygen production, you know, natural pollination services nutrient cycling down to things like reducing erosion and flood mitigation. Those last two, we expect to be a particular importance in Vermont in the coming decades. But you know, for these systems to continue to provide services at a high level the level we expect them to. They really need to be resilient in the face of a rapidly changing climate. And it makes good sense to think that the systems that are most resilient to change or those that are diverse that have intact food webs that have niches occupied by a diverse suite of organisms that have different strategies that allow them to persist in a changing system. I mentioned having worked a lot in disturbance adapted systems and that's exactly what you see there organisms that have different strategies to persist in a very dynamic system. That's true elsewhere, of course, so the more diversity we have the more likely some of these systems are able to persist in stochastic or seemingly random natural disturbance events, or things that were coming to expect related to a rapidly I think past testimonials testimony also did a great job of framing this as an issue larger than Vermont right we know the biodiversity crisis is a global issue in scale. You know, the defined and described as a six mass extinction that we know that among taxa and when I say tax I mean different groups of organisms think mammals, you know fish birds plants you name it. Rates of extinctions have increased as a result of modern human induced stressors. But even though it's global in nature we can really find some concrete regional and local examples of shifts in our biodiversity. I teal that up just to say that you know now we're in this new session, reviewing this bill now, you know, each 126. And I, I'd imagine that all members of that committee would guess correctly that you know in this year that's past, our concerns regarding biodiversity have not really improved, right, we can point to several bright spots, but the overall trend is a concerning one. You know in this past year, a couple highlights of the work from my organization, again the Vermont Center for eco studies that I think, talk to this, this general story of changes in biodiversity I'd like to highlight. One is our 2022 State of Mountain birds report. This is the product of our mountain birdwatch program that tracks high elevation breeding birds throughout the Northeast. And you know these are a particular important because our high elevation sites in the Northeast are warming faster than other parts of our states. And what we found is that seven of these 10 species that we track have our averaging a decline of 39% since 2010. And I recognize the way I'm presenting that is really understating this that these are pretty alarming numbers. I think when we think of changes related to climate change we're used to thinking of changes that occur over a century. 120 years, you know, here we are finding alarming trends in 1012 years. And that's, that's, that's pretty concerning that showing that it's here and it's now and it's happening fast. Right. We released our state of Vermont bees report back in November. This really took a minute or two seconds. I just want, could you just restate the decline seven of 10 species are seven of the 10 high elevation breeding bird species that we track as part of our mountain birdwatch program have average declines of 39% 9% in the past 12 years. Thank you I just want to sit with that for a second. Yeah, it's worth it's worth considering, you know, what that means right at what 39% of a population means in terms of its long term viability. Right, that that's something I think you know I also would like to hit on is that when we think of conservation, it's not just protecting the populations that we know to exist now right populations are dynamic. They accommodate those those changes over time, and they become less resilient to change if if just their sheer numbers decline and then we're seeing significant signs of that in certain cases. And I think we have a question from Representative Smith. Thank you. Can you be more specific as to what birds are endangered of high altitude birds you're talking about. So, some of these species you might be familiar with things like a white-throated sparrow is one of our species that we're documenting declines, yellow belly flycatcher, big nails rush black pole warbler. So again these are species that we're particularly particularly interested in because they occur in our states, but they're restricted to breeding at these high elevation sites. And I find that as climate is is changing and is predicted to change in the future that they're going to have to within their their capabilities and abilities to shift their ranges to track areas that are suitable for their breeding so this might mean that in some cases these species might end up being Canadian endemics, meaning that you know they're not going to be extinct but they might not be found in the United States anymore they're shifting northwards. We have another question. Are you okay taking questions in the in the middle of your. Yeah, I encourage that, please. Great. Representative civilian. So, I just want to understand the nature of this problem so this is, this is climate change that is causing this as opposed to development in Vermont that is causing this. Right so when we're thinking about these high elevation sites yes. And that's that's kind of a good point when we think about conserved sites in general right. Many of our high elevation sites in Vermont are pretty well protected and that's for good reason right they host a unique Swedish species some of these are these birds that I mentioned. But you know that's only part of the story right I think high elevation sites have been protected pretty well because they haven't been under threat for development. Another piece to this story is thinking about, you know, as we expand our ability to conserve lands and I think, you know what this bill attempts to do. To expand our portfolio of conserved lands to these areas that might be under more direct threat for development that aren't currently protected that value, you know, biodiversity and other suites of species. But you're correct in saying that this is a climate change issue we're talking about our high elevation species. Representative Smith. Thank you. I can I can wait when I start as a question if you want me to wait I will. I think if we're here it's going to come up later. I'm referring to I want to go back to the birds a little bit. Big enough rush has been kind of not I wouldn't say extinct but you don't see very many of them in Vermont you haven't for 30 or 40 years. So, would you fault climate change or something that started to disappear 30 or 40 years ago. Yes, not totally disappear but the sparrow there's still plenty of it. Right, yeah, that's a that's a great point. Yeah, so we've been tracking these changes over time right so this is these have been pretty general declines over these past three four decades that you mentioned, but the rates of declines are certainly increasing. And that's what we see with climate change right we have we have documented warming and shifts in in this case plant communities that would support you know what species that the of trees that dominate these areas that they breed in. You know, those have been shifting as well but the rate is also increasing now. So that's true for the temperature that's driving a lot of the suitability of these areas. So that's the structure and plant communities and then ultimately other species like these birds that depend on them. I'd like you to comment on the good the well. There's more bald eagles and there ever used to be in Vermont. Yeah, so they're normally, they're normally a cold colder weather bird, aren't they. So you can find bald eagles much further south than here. But that's it that that's worth mentioning right we do have a few examples of species that have done better right bald eagles is one loons is another one I like to point out right so loons are example of a species that, you know, 2030 years ago, we're on the brink of being extirpated from the state and we've recovered and rebounded. We have record numbers of them now. That's a function of real concerted effort and I think that really highlights the value of recovery plans for specific species right. It shows that when we commit the time and resources to understanding what's threatening a specific species, and we're committed to recovering them, we can do it. The problem is, we find, you know, how few examples of that there really is. There are something like 11 recovery plans in the state. We have many more imperiled species and just 11. So the species specific approach can be valuable it will continue to be valuable, but it really limits and almost handcuffs our ability to address the biodiversity issue at scale. And that's why I think, you know, at least the intent of this bill, large scale conservation is trying to get at, you know, addressing biodiversity at the scale in which it's an issue. That's a great point. Thank you. Thank you. So what one more point on some of our work in this past year I wanted to highlight our state of Vermont bees report. I think I left off by saying that it paints a good picture of the 352 species of bees we have in Vermont, an impressive diversity I think a number that surprises most people. As we're getting a handle of these species. Many of them have been understudied in the past. We've already found that 30% are imperiled to some degree, and means that they can already justify some conservation action relative to how we we describe imperiled species in the state. Similarly, you know, 25% of these species are specialists meaning that they really depend on one specific species of plant to support them that in and of itself is not a bad strategy it doesn't make them inherently rare, but it does highlight an piece of this kind of biodiversity picture in that species interactions are pretty important and and they're tough to necessarily account for if we're taking this species specific approach, right. I think pollination systems are a good way to think about this in pollination ecology we'd like to visualize all these interactions among plants and pollinators in a system in a grid. And it's really easy to see all the specialists that interact with one species, all the generalists that can survive and interact with several species, but it also makes it easy for you to visualize how, if some of these interactions are broken, because there's loss from the system or weakened. It makes that those general interactions, less robust, less resilient, less likely to persist in the future this idea of long term by ability that we teed up, maybe a minute or two ago. That same concept is true when we think about our habitats in the poll, right. There are connections that are facilitating food webs. We make sure that niches are occupied. And a lot of these we really only know at the most basic level. But, you know, the more intact that they are the more species you have playing these roles again the more likely they're able to persist in the face of changes and climate change certainly being one of them. I'll also mention that a little later this year will be releasing a report on biodiversity more generally in the state. This is going to be a product of what we call our Vermont Atlas of Life. This is our big biodiversity database uses biodiversity data from anywhere you can imagine we can get it right think museum records think research databases. Community science observations. It allows us to paint a really nice picture of what we know about biodiversity in the state now, because we also use historical data and it allows us to identify trends over time. And it allows us to take that next step and model what we expect shifts in species distributions to look like under different climate scenarios, because we know species will be shifting within the state. They'll be shifting out of the state, some species will be coming into the state, and they'll be doing this at different rates, and sometimes in unpredictable ways. It's going to be an interesting coming decades on some of these these shifts and changes in our in our biodiversity and being able to model as going to be important. You know, some species of course are going to be very sensitive to change. And we see some of that already. And it could just be because their life history traits don't make them very adaptable to a changing climate. They're restricted to a specific habitat type, or pollinator that's rare. Other species of course are going to be able to track climate change a little easier, they're going to be a little more adaptable. Ultimately though everything has a tipping point whether it's sensitive or more robust. But of course the problem is we don't know where these tipping points live, and often they're best viewed in the rear view mirror, when it might be a little too late for successful reaction. You know, unlike some of these success stories we mentioned already right the loons and the bald eagles. So that kind of brings me back to this bill right given given that this story is shifting species over landscape over time. And that this is a large scale issue it's certainly statewide and extends beyond our borders for sure. The scale in which we have to address these concerns is a large one and I think that's the intent of this bill right. I think by being able to think about 3050% of land in some form of conservation and I understand that that's going to be different forms in different places. Allows us to protect different things in the state right it allows us to protect landscape features, you know different forms of hydrology in the state or topography. To protect our natural communities. We're very fortunate in Vermont to have a great system of classifying and ranking our natural communities. So we know how to identify them, we know how to, you know, decide if they're if they're rare or an imperiled. It allows us also to protect the connectivity needed to facilitate and allow some of these shifts in distributions to occur so that we're not just protecting the areas we know to be kind of biodiversity hot spots in the state but where some of those places might be several decades from now is because they may be in different places. I think it also allows us to protect at that species level that we talked a little bit about which, you know, I think when we think about conservation initially that's that's kind of the level we're used to thinking at right a rare species that we're interested in and we want to protect. Those will certainly fall into, you know, larger protections as well. It allows us, you know, if these areas are truly in conservation allows us to get at that concern of making sure our protections facilitate long term by ability that came up in our conversation, and also allows us to hopefully either directly or directly include areas of the state that are underrepresented in our conservation portfolio now. I'm thinking aquatic systems right we know a lot of aquatic organisms are declining faster than terrestrial organisms, but they're not necessarily as well represented as terrestrial organisms in our conservation portfolio, and also certain biophysical regions in the in the state as well. Southern Piedmont in Vermont kind of southeastern Vermont has been highlighted as an area that doesn't have as much necessarily as other biophysical regions in the state. And by testing a wide net in where we can serve in the state will be able to capture some of those and better represent them and the biodiversity that they that they host. I think I'll just wrap up by saying that my organization along with several others hosted a series of webinars back in December, and really focused at legislators and three environmental issues that we know to be important now we expect to be important in the future. These were climate change and resilience, forest and biodiversity, and water resources and conservation. And we had expert panels panelists from throughout the state, talk about the science, identify needs and actions that we've been in. But what stood out to me, you know, sitting and observing some of these were the common themes that emerged among the three, you know at the surface, seemingly different topics. And some of those themes were the first one is that for our systems to provide us the services, we expect they need to be resilient in the face of climate change, and resilience is best when they're diverse right so that that speaks to the value of protecting a second was keeping forest as far as right the story of Vermont up until recently has been one of reforestation right. So before becoming reforested after the past century century and a half of clearing. That's beginning to change now for the first time in decades we're losing more forest and we're gaining something on the order of over 12,000 acres a year. And once you lose these areas to a land use change and development, you lose them they're not really coming back at least not into a healthy functional system without major intervention. So what is the need to accelerate the rate in which we're conserving lands in the state, not only to reach our own conservation goals, but also to again, and I think this is kind of the, you know, the story of this bill to address this issue at scale. So I'll leave you with that and thank you again for the time you before me today. Thank you very much that that was a jam packed with a lot of great information so we may need to rewind with you during a little some questions right now. I think I saw representative civilian first. Thank you, right. We're looking at declines and bird populations. Climate change and the cause of that. We know if any of that is being impacted by any of these avian flu and, if so, if the avian flu themselves are being are aggravated or or by climate change or for development. I think I'd speak to if avian flu is being aggravated by climate change, it may or may not. What we do see with avian flu and things like that so those will be, you know those can impact populations at a shorter time scale right when there's this kind of a more of a prevalence of that disease can really knock down birds. We're talking about some of these longer term declines. We're talking about trends over decades that we wouldn't really attribute to an outbreak of avian flu that those will be more shorter blocks of disruptions in the populations. But you're right to say that's one of many stressors right it's not just climate change. There are sweetest stressors. We kind of break down and if we're talking about birds in guilds based on their their life history strategies and there's certain guilds that we see to be in decline right aerial insectivores is one that you hear a lot of, and we're attributing the client to them to the clients and insects, and a lot of a lot of studies are tying that to use of pesticides right so pesticides are reducing insects which then reduce the birds that feed on them. And that's what we're looking for. In some cases, force floor nesting birds right if our force understories are being disturbed and not they're not regenerating the way they would have in the past. In some cases this is due to, you know, higher higher than the normal deer densities, then those species get get impacted so there are several stressors at play. I think climate change is a nice umbrella one but there's there's plenty to think about. Thank you mentors. Did you say higher than normal deer densities. Yeah so dear dear elevated your densities have impacts on forest regeneration. Typically, you know, the research suggests that once you start getting around 10 year per square mile you start seeing impacts to species that are their preferred browse, you know a lot of hardwood saplings for example. Once you start exceeding densities will be on that then understories just don't regenerate right so you'll have canopy trees you'll be in a forest it'll look like a forest, but you don't have that next cohort of trees that are going to replace those that are above them. And that's just a function of density of herbivores that isn't being curved by any other strategy we see that in nearby states. It's certainly a concern here in the future. The species were already there. But that's, in my opinion, another another major concern and in how ours, how resilient our systems will be in the future. Thank you. So actually I have a couple of questions for you I'll start with just the basic logistics. Are the webinars available on your webpage for us to revisit. We made them specific to legislators we didn't, we wanted people to speak freely and not necessarily be concerned with, you know, public input, we are putting together summaries of these webinars with links to the recordings that I will I would like to share with you. Great. Oh, great. And then can you just I want to go back to sort of the basics of why human beings as a species should care about biodiversity of other species. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean to me I think the way I think about it is, you know, we can we can look at specific species that are maybe charismatic and that we're interested in having or keeping on the landscape for their intrinsic value but I think more than that it's the the fact that, you know, these systems these natural systems that that we've come to kind of love and enjoy in our state are really built upon a network of many species. The interactions, most of which we have very basic understandings of, because we just, you know, they haven't been studied well enough. But what we do know is that maintaining these this high level of diversity allows the system to functions in the way that we expect them to right force that regenerate on their own right force that are resilient on their own that can withstand natural disturbances, right they don't necessarily need intervention because they're functioning and they're healthy on their own. With that we get services from them right whether we value those are not you know some of the things that I mentioned early on so natural climate mitigation. Natural disturbance event mitigation right so I'm thinking flooding in this case. And just services like again nutrient cycling natural pollination services. So those things exist under natural and normal circumstances, the concern of course is that as we add additional stressors to these areas as we fragment these forest as a climate is changing around them. And all these other additional stressors we touched on a couple others earlier that you know you might start losing some of the more sensitive species from the system and as we lose these connections, it becomes a lot more fragile as opposed to robust. We have to think about conserving systems as a whole, because that's kind of our most efficient way to protect these connections, rather than trying to tease apart individual species that we know are contributing to a larger network of interactions. It's not an easy concept to wrap our minds around right it's it's you know we're talking about different trophic levels right so organisms that are down from decomposing that organic matter and those that are you know kind of the basis of the food chain all the the big predators that that we can recognize. So it is a complicated system but but the idea is that for that system to function properly we have to think of conserving the diversity of species. And that is a larger scale question and then just individual rare species. And we are a product of that system. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there's there's no way around it, whether we recognize it day to day or not. We are function that system. Yeah, through and through, I think you're right and saying that. So, and you mentioned a term that I'm familiar with, but might be new to some folks or at least in this application so stochastic events and climate change or the increase of those. Can you unwrap that you touched on a little bit in your last answer the diversity and resiliency and our ability to respond to or move through these increased big events. Yeah, so stochastic events. I guess the way I describe it is, these are events that would be like a seemingly random event in nature right so this could be a major storm event right a once in a century storm that comes through. You can kind of get a rough idea of how or best guess at how often these things happen in the past, but essentially they kind of occur and seemingly random, random times. These types of events really kind of disrupt the system, and they create openings for, you know, new, new species to come into certain specific areas. Again, the more resilient an area is the more likely it is to respond and regenerate following disturbances and changes. You know stochastic events are more specific disturbance events, whereas climate change is this kind of, you know, longer term shift in a climate. They, they both intertwine in that we kind of expect more of these larger scale disturbance events to happen with more frequency and possibly intensity in a changing climate. But the, again, the general underlying principle is that, you know, our systems are going to be stressed one way or another right whether it's the specific disturbance events where that's a long term change in the climate. What we're thinking about is what makes them most resilient and we get at that question of how do I how do we keep our systems resilient in the face of this change. It's supporting the biodiversity that they have and the biodiversity that will be there in the coming decades because that will be changing as well. Thank you. Representative Smith. Thank you. You indicated earlier that your specialty is plants. Can you tell me what the Vermont Center of Eco studies take is on mill foil eradication. Well, so we haven't taken a specific stance on that because we haven't studied that right we like to focus on at least when we speak publicly and give testimony on things that we have expertise in and work directly with. You know, if, if it was a question more specific to maybe a prescription or a strategy for eradication. I'd be happy to try to answer that for you but because we haven't looked into that specifically I hesitate to give you an answer just here today. Is there anything that the Center for Eco studies is doing as far as trying to resolve what potentially could be problems and a lot of the waters in Vermont. I can tell you that it is a major concern right. I think aquatic invasives have recently got a lot of attention and they and well deserving because it's going to be a major threat to our systems. And it the fact that these are at this point pretty widespread is of major concern. I think strategies to remove them and to try to support and and facilitate our native aquatic vegetation should be a high priority. But, but beyond that in terms of specific prescriptions or strategies. I don't have a good answer for you right now. Thank you. So, just represent sacroids. Yeah, a couple of questions. In the bill we we reference different kinds of levels of protection for areas. You tell us something about what the relationship might be between those levels of protection and, and biodiversity in general. I think overall, and this is, I guess, thinking back to, I gave that example of the webinars that we had. You know, kind of the top tier is to to make sure we keep our areas forested now understanding that there are going to be different levels of what a conservation looks like. That's kind of our top bar. Beyond that, what kind of interventions or managements are allowed in those conservation areas I think will play an important role. And that's kind of in my mind, kind of the secondary step, and that'll be pretty in my mind almost almost site specific right if we're thinking about what's appropriate in terms of management for for an area I think there's going to be a lot of value in more more more intentional management in some habitats to support biodiversity but that won't necessarily be appropriate every area. So I think using this kind of suite of conservation options to to broaden at least the the greatest percentage of land that we can have in some form of conservation is and then beyond that I think it'll be kind of a more detailed discussion as to how do we use different forms of conservation of different management strategies to maximize the effective use of these lands. Thank you. Do you have another. He actually covered it. Okay. Representative Tory. Thank you. Nice very easy question. The number of these species you mentioned in Vermont. What was that number. 352. I'll say that I guess that's a very specific number right we expect that there are a couple of several other species. We kind of identified our maybe most wanted list these are species that occur in nearby states. We might be in Vermont we just haven't found them yet. So, you know, given additional survey time and effort that number might slightly go up. Which makes reminds me of the estimates that I've heard about the number of species that we don't know. And so another reason that protecting intact systems as we increase our knowledge and understanding of them. Is that just struck me as you said that. Well, that's that's exactly right and these are bees bees are very easy to spot and they're pretty popular there's a lot of interest behind bees and yet we still are still finding new species. So imagine less, less charismatic or less, you know, for lack of a better term interesting species that people don't necessarily are serving for their, you know, there's even less we know about them so there's. So there's, there's, you're actually right and saying there's a lot we still don't know. Great. Any final questions. Thank you for this testimony was very helpful. Dr gozo. Thank you for having me today. Members, we will take a break for about 10 minutes and reconvene at 10 o'clock. We are going to reconvene our meeting and welcome this Thompson ecologist. Good morning. Good morning everybody good morning madam chair and members of the committee I'm grateful to be here. Thank you so much for having me in this morning. I want to start. Shall I just go ahead. Yes, okay. I just want to start by telling you who I am explaining who I am I'm Elizabeth Thompson, go by Liz and I am live in Jericho. I've been in Vermont for a little more than 40 years I, I retired now from the Vermont Land Trust so I just want to clarify originally the agenda said that I was the director of conservation for the Vermont Land Trust I have retired from that position in the end of December so I am currently a an independent ecologist but I worked for many years for the Vermont Land Trust, also for the nature conservancy and as a contractor for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. Throughout my entire career I have been actively involved in large scale conservation planning. I'm here to basically support the bill as as drafted each 126 and very excited to see it to see it brought forward. I'm also grateful to my predecessor Dr. Robozo for really setting a good stage for what I'm about to talk about and answering all the hard questions. So, so I'll try to take off from there. He spoke about it spoke with you know what and the things you asked what, what is biodiversity, and why should we care about it why should humans care about it. And I think that what I have to offer here is perhaps a little bit of reflection on those things, but also some practical solutions for for going forward to protect biological diversity I'm going to share my screen now and talk to you about and I'll just if you have feedback on on the display let me know. But, okay, great. But if, if, if I, if I can, I'd like to just talk about conserving biological diversity in Vermont. So, starting with this, which is just sort of a reiteration of what you heard earlier, which is that we have a large number of species in Vermont some somewhere between 24,000 and 43,500 is a number and estimate absolute estimate. One of the advantages of this is a couple of points of this chart. And this is from from Vermont conservation design. This is, this is to show that we have vertebrate animals, which are bear deer birds, fish, etc. And this is a very small piece of the pie, a very small percentage of the actual species we have in Vermont, fungi, a huge proportion in vertebrate animals, the largest proportion of of organisms that we have in Vermont. And the number is vague because we just don't know, as was said earlier we just don't know how many of each of these of these species we have we know how many vertebrate animals pretty certainly we know sort of how many like ins. We have an approximate idea how many masses and liver words but some of the other groups we just don't know. And fungi in particular occur underground we just there's so much we don't know and this is why we need to protect landscapes to protect all the species that we don't know about. As I said earlier, and I want to just reiterate that it's critically important that we understand that we are there's, there's so much to know, and we cannot protect each species one by one so we instead we use a landscape approach. So what do we need to protect first of all let me just define biodiversity. Again, because it was asked the other day or yesterday I heard the question. It is the variety of life in all its forms and all the interactions between living things and their environment. It includes ecosystem diversity, landscape diversity, community diversity, species diversity, and genetic diversity. So at all scales. We just needed to protect biological diversity. We need a resilient and connected landscape, we need a system of waters and lands that lands and waters that are connected and protected in such a manner as to promote full ecological function. And this includes the follow at least the following elements. We need ecological reserves. These need to be, many of them need to be large. We need natural areas which are sort of like ecological reserves protected as, as, as for biological diversity solely but they're generally smaller stewardship lands which are lands that are responsibly managed many of our forest lands fall into this category, and then connecting lands or linkages, which can be can take many forms but sometimes they're riparian areas. Sometimes they take other forms, healthy farmlands, and then semi semi wild urban and suburban places. Oops, excuse me, sorry. So ecological reserves are needed to protect some of the things that we, and this is this is discussed in the build but ecological reserves are needed to protect some features like old growth forests and state significant natural communities like this dry oak maple limestone forest. These, some of these really need to be protected at the highest level in ecological reserves which are managed strictly for biological diversity, and where natural ecological processes can take place. So trees can grow old and die. They can fall down to the forest floor, and they can store and sequester and store carbon in the most effective way. We also need some some smaller perhaps smaller natural areas and these could be called ecological reserves to but just on a smaller scale. And this is, for example, this is peach and bog in Groton State Forest, which is a state designated natural area. And I'll use this photo also to point out that in some cases the natural areas that are designated and called natural areas are actually not permanently protected. So the bill calls for permanent protection. It defines conservation as permanent protection, and not all of our natural areas are permanently protected. This is important to know. But this is peach and bog. It's a special natural area and it is currently protected. And here is chickering bog, which is a smaller peatland and it is permanently protected by the Nature Conservancy. This is a group of students on a boardwalk in chickering bog. And these places provide so many ecological functions as well as educational and recreational functions, and they protect rare plants like this twig rush. And they offer access like this board. This is not a rare plant. This is cheap Laurel, but it's growing right through the boardwalking colchester bog, a lovely little natural area in Chittenden County in our most populated area of the state. This is Calypso orchid, which, which also needs special protection in natural areas. Unfortunately, this has not been seen in many years in at least a couple of decades. We also need stewardship lands, lands that are responsibly managed carefully managed to produce timber products and other products. And this is group of forest, foresters in a managed forest land in in southern Vermont. That's Tony DeMotto in the center. We need connecting lands or linkages and this is the missus Goy Delta. Connecting lands are not always riparian areas but as I said they often are. We need healthy farm lands and this is a farmer in in Colchester it at the Pine Island Community Farm in a field that is that is being managed partly for natural features and partly to support goats. And we need semi wild urban and suburban places like this my very only in my very own neighborhood, a simply a lawn that has been let go and monarch butterflies are enjoying it. And this is a vision design is a practical scientific vision for sustaining Vermont's ecologically functional landscape into an uncertain future. It applies a course filter fine filter approach, which I've alluded to a little bit. It uses simple recognizable features, and it depends upon thoughtful stewardship and management. I'm going to go back to this to this idea. And this is part of what Vermont conservation design does but this images from an earlier report of the Vermont biodiversity project going back about 20 years. I'm showing that an ideal system of ecological reserves would have core reserves and these are ecological reserves surrounded by stewardship lands or carefully protected lands. They show what the natural areas are perhaps tinier areas smaller areas scattered perhaps even within urban or agricultural areas. And then connecting lands. And then looking regionally go ahead. Did you have a question. Okay, I didn't see one. What we do for a representative Stebbins. Thanks. It's more a question for you is you had mentioned that we're going to get sort of a full overview of Vermont conservation design is not this or is that going to be something else. I think it's going to be something else. Okay. Thank you. So I will will also say that I will not be fully covering Vermont conservation design here and I do expect that you will hear here much more depth about that in the in the future sessions so great. So, but in any case here I want to just show you that that we, we are not isolated here in Vermont that that obviously so we look at the regional picture as well and this is a nice regional look at where Vermont sits and this is actually focused on the state of Maine I'm borrowing this slide from somewhere else, but you can see that the linkage areas, several key wildlife linkage areas are identified this has been mentioned in the bill and by you and others formerly, but you can see those yellow arrows that show where Vermont sits in this larger wildland landscape. And then here is going back to Vermont conservation design here is the design for an ecologically functional landscape. And this covers around 66 67% of the state of Vermont, which is not meant to, to say that all of those lands should be permanently protected, but all of those lands should be protected in some way or another to protect the ecologically functional landscape in Vermont. And again, you will hear much more detail about how this was put together and devised by someone else. So, but a question is, how much is enough, how much conservation land is enough enough and how much do we have. I want to think about the kinds of land protection and the different tools and I've heard you talk about different land protection tools earlier about easements and so forth, and also the question of permanency. I'm delighted to see that the definition of conservation in the bill is one of permanent protection. And I think that is that is critical. As I mentioned earlier, there are lands that are designated as natural areas and wild lands that don't have permanent protection, and that needs to be given some attention. That's enough. Well, you've, you've been talking about that, but the Vermont climate action plan of course talks about 30 by 30 and that's what this bill calls for and, and then 50 by 50 50% of the landscape by 2050 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050 and so the other comment, I guess that I have heard is that those are those, then at the bottom here I say a site, half earth, which is an organization that calls for 50% of protection of the planet so these, all these have been, have been out there and have made it into the public discourse which is a really amazing thing. And I support it fully. We can't, we're, and we have work to do to get toward these targets. As someone earlier has said the devil is in the details, and you have called for those details to be looked at closely in the bill so that, so that there will be that work will be done, it is work and it needs to be done. So a little bit about how much we do have we don't actually don't know how much we have of each of those of categories that are listed in the, in the bill the three that are that are called for or defined reserve ecological reserve areas biodiversity conservation areas and natural resource management areas. So you, the bill calls for those to be evaluated. But we those those three categories as I understand it are meant to be to sort of mirror the USGS gap analysis program. So, so those gap categories there are four categories of protection. And those categories of protection have been used to look at conservation lands up until now and will continue to be used. But those data, I will say are are incomplete. The data that make up that the, the, any protected lands database that you look at presently has incomplete data on the gap status. So they're not reliable. And so the work really needs to be done to look more, look more closely at that. Now I'm going to just show you the some estimates of what we think we might have and then this one actually is going back to the Vermont biodiversity project this is a 2002 map. And, but it's useful in, and also it's useful in that it, its legend defines what, what these four classes are so class one lands are managed in their natural states such that natural disturbance regimes are allowed to occur and natural resource is prohibited, whereas class two lands are managed for their natural values primarily but may receive uses that somewhat degrade the quality of the natural communities present. And this could include things like potentially controlling invasive species managing for particular species habitat needs. And also maintaining roads, those sorts of things and I did hear some discussion about roads yesterday. Class three lands are protected from permanent conversion to non natural uses but are subject to extractive uses so many of our forest managed forests are are in that category, whereas class four lands are managed in ways that may preclude natural and to the presence of native plant and animal assemblages and many of our farmlands would fall into that class. So you can see in this map that, and you know don't don't pick at it too much because there's a couple of errors in it that have been since corrected but, and this is this is the nature of this this kind of work it's just it's hard to define these classes sometimes. And you can see for example in the northwestern part of the state very near where I live, I live right on the west side of that big red blob, which is class four. That is the Jericho under health firing range. It's a fabulous natural area it's a beautiful as many many natural communities in there that are protected actually, but being what it is. It does have it does not have permanent protection and can be converted at any time. And many of our farmlands show up as read in the Champlain Valley, those are lands that that are in non natural cover now. Representative Smith has a question. Thank you. I have two questions that Matt that we're that we're looking at right now is a biodiversity project 2002 that was 21 years ago. Is there anything that's like 2022 or as a matter of fact, I knew, hang on. Let's just see a comparison. Yeah, yeah, it's the reason I'm showing you this is partly for that comparison and partly, partly because this is the good, a good display of the protection class but yes absolutely this is all data and things have changed. I'm sticking with this for a second Vermont biodiversity project 2002 here we have you can see a pie chart of the different classes of conserved land at that time. So just take note of this that 80% 80.8 so we had about 19% conserved effect at that time. And this was the distribution on Dr Roboso talked about this the distribution of conserved lands is skewed toward the mountain. Biophysical regions we have lots in the Green Mountains, Northern and Southern and in the Northeast Kingdom, relatively little in the southern Vermont Piedmont that is the southeast and part of the state and the Champlain Valley. And he also spoke about the elevational spread that many of our conserved lands are at highest elevations because those lands are simply less productive for other other uses. That's really just history. Going back coming to a more modern look. This is 2020. So just a couple years old 2020 protected land and this is not by protection class but by ownership this is data from the Vermont land trust but you can see there's there is more conserved land. And then a summary of Vermont protected lands. This is from a new report that is just about to come out called New England Wildlands. It is not out yet but it's coming out soon and I'm happy to share some data from it. Vermont is about 5.9 million acres about 15% of New England and it's about 78% of its forest and this is declining I've heard different numbers on this, but in that range so it's it's a range but of that forest about 79% of it is private and 21% is publicly owned. This is important information. In all of Vermont about 26% is permanently protected from development and about about 19% of that is working for us about 4% of that is farmland and about 3.2% of that is wildland. These are classes that were put together for a particular project don't exactly match up with gap but approximately do. And here's this here. Yes, go ahead. Thank you from Representative Sebelia. Can, can you thanks Liz can you go back to the, whoever's, can you go back. Yeah, so just calling this out. So this permanent permanent word permanent is there and I mean I'm seeing different slides with different uses of this permanent so I just want to kind of put a pin here and say I really need to understand whether it's being protected or permanently conserved the words and and asking kind of the university chair if there's some place that really can help me get the definitions of this because it seems like it's pretty important to understand. So the definitions. Yes, and the numbers part of why we need the plan. Yeah, is to really understand the numbers so they're. The plan would result in an actual inventory and understanding of the different classes of lands that have been conserved and where they fit in those steps. It is a plan that we're talking about. Yeah, that's right. It is a plan to kind of put order and science into our conservation efforts. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes, and if I might address that briefly representative Sebelius and one could go on for a very long time about permanency. So I won't, but there is a whole range of what that actually means. And when permanency is an elusive thing. There's no such thing as absolutely permanent in the geological sense if you know what I mean. But we think about the most permanent kind of protection is ownership by an entity that can manage in the intended way and oversight by a third party which often involves a conservation easement. So it's sort of like wearing a belt and suspenders at the same time that is the highest and best and most permanent level of conservation that I can think of. But there are other things that that do count like wilderness designation, for example, it's pretty permanent, but it can be undone. So this is this is a great question to dig into at that point. Representative Smith. Thank you. If you could back up one slide. You've got up there that all remote 26.2% permanently protected. That's pretty darn close to being on track for 3030 isn't it. Well, here's the rub. But if you don't mind my saying this that the work will be in determining what which of those categories actually adequately protect the elements of biodiversity that we are concerned about. This is the detail that people have been talking about. It might it's tempting to say that we're close at 26%, but it doesn't all protect biodiversity equally. So, so if if you had, you know, the ability to to have as much gap category one as as you wanted, and we don't we simply don't. But if you did we would that would really be the easiest way I guess I would say the most efficient and easiest way to protect many, many elements of biodiversity is through ecological reserve areas. We know that working for us can protect many elements of biological diversity. But the real work will be in in in the work that you are calling for in this bill is for the agency of natural resources to direct an analysis of that. So that we really know what those what those working lands what those what those lands in that third category. That is the natural resource and manage management areas. What is that correct proportion of those three categories that will best protect biological diversity. Right now it's heavily skewed toward the third category and and I don't know that that is going to be the most effective. So that's going to be the real trick. So, yeah, it looks like we're close but not necessarily really when it really comes to protect. We're close but we're not close. That's well put represent Smith yes. It's an amount of land but we need to know where this and what how what it's doing, representative bongarts. Can you go back to slide I think it's 25. If one more. More more. You're going land by elevation that one. Oops. The land by elevation conservative land. Yeah, I just wanted you to talk for a second. About why it's important to have land conserved or terms of maintaining biodiversity at all levels, like is it enough just to do the mountain tops. And if not, why it's important to go down to lower lands there as well. Representative bongarts as you know, because of where you where you are and the area that you represent some lower elevation lands have very disproportionate disproportionately high levels of biological diversity. For example, the Vermont Valley has a lot of biological diversity, but it's relatively low in elevation the Champlain Valley has Valley has a lot of biological diversity in terms of just in terms of species richness, in terms of state significant natural communities, diversity of species species that simply do not occur at higher elevations. And so there's both differences and increased richness as you go down in elevation. So we're going to have all elevations represented. You know, we've heard earlier about things like pick nose thrush and so forth that occur at high elevation, very very sensitive things at high elevations I'm glad those elevations are all conserved, but we need more lower elevations for the things that are less well conserved in terms of biodiversity to that answer your question. Representative bongarts. Thank you. And then actually while we have interrupted you. I would ask you go back to the biophysical region and just explain those and the numbers you have there. Why it matters. Yeah, so it's a similar thing. It's a similar thing. The numbers we the Vermont conservation design calls for a more equal distribution of conserve lands throughout the different biophysical regions. Not completely equal because in some senses, the lands that are already intact the ones in the in the mountains and in the northeastern Highlands are good candidates for large ecological reserves, but we really do need to increase what's in the lower elevations. What I don't have here but you'll see if you hear more about the Vermont conservation design is that in the eastern and western parts of the state where those 9% 8% and 7% numbers are. And also in the Vermont Valley where the 10% is, you will, you will find how carriers bedrock it's a different kind of bedrock then occurs in the Green Mountains and in the northeastern Highlands, and it is bedrock that supports a different array of natural communities and a different array of species and increased biological diversity just more species richness more species per unit area. In some of those places, some of our best rich northern hardwood forests occur in that eastern part of the state and in the western part of the state in the Champlain Valley we have things like that limestone bluff cedar pine forests and local maple limestone forest natural communities that don't occur in the other biophysical regions. So it's important to represent all of them to. Thank you representative Smith. Thank you. It looks to me by that map that the Northeast Kingdom has already done its part, as has the Green Mountain range, and it looks like we need to hammer on Chittenden County a little bit harder to get their percentages up. I'd be right in assuming that that I couldn't. I could conclude the same thing. If I were to look at this. Yes. Yes, I would say we need to we need we really do need to up to up the game and most biophysical regions I think. Thank you. Thank you I think we're ready to let you continue. Yes, and do give me the hook if you need to but I am watching the clock. I don't know about that. No, we just may have more questions. Okay. All right, so, and this is. So this is going back to the, the data that were presented right here. This is the data from the New England Wildlands project this new project that's coming out. And this one just highlights wildlands and protected forest and unprotected forest that doesn't doesn't do all the classes but the wildlands are essentially gap one and some gap to lands. And so those that are dark green here. And the lighter green is forest that's that's protected but not in the highest and not in the wild what they call the wildlands what we call the wildlands category. And then zooming in from on Vermont you can see what's going on here so so the dark green are the basically are the wilderness areas and and if you would to zoom in you'd see some other smaller natural areas. I think that even you could if you zoomed in you could see peach and bog natural area but I won't do that. But generally speaking, and again, these are general numbers don't take them to to do with take them with a grain of salt, because we really still have work to do on this, but approximately we have 26% conserved protect and they use the Wildlands and the project uses the word protected. Here's again another thing terminology is tricky protected, preserved, conserved, secured all these terms are used interchangeably. I'm really happy to see that you have a definition in the bill that makes it clear what you're using. You were advised yesterday by council in the in the in the context of what you're using so you use the word conserved in this con context to mean protected and meeting the definition and as described above. So, so I'm using these terms somewhat interchangeably because in practice they are so it's just something we have to be, you know, custom to. But anyway, Vermont protected lands from the Wildlands and Woodlands project, approximately 3% in the wildland category that's gap, mostly gap one, some gap to working for us mostly gap three that's 19% farm land that's mostly 44% and unprotected 74%. So this is what what approximately what it looks like currently again these these data need need analysis particularly so the Wildlands New England Wildlands report and project was focused on Wildlands focused on that that gap one and gap two category. And so had a slightly different purpose than this they did not look at the other categories in great depth but what they did with that first category was to look at every single natural area designation every single wilderness designation every single conservation easement that they did for Wildlands protection. It was a tedious tedious job, but really, really fun work to do I worked with them on it and it was just really good work to be good to do and this is what we need to do for the other categories and it's it's it's not hard work but it's just, you know, let's let's let's dive in let's actually look and see what we have so that we know how how close we are to meeting some of these goals. But here's my recommendations, we do need permanently protected land and I mean, and I mean, permanent. As as as permanent as humans can do. And, which is that belt and suspenders approach that I talked about protected you use the word conserved and again I'm using those somewhat interchangeably but we mean, we need protected from conversion to other uses, we need to increase the total. That's clear, we need to increase the proportion of class one to somewhere between nine and 10%. And this is called for by Vermont conservation design, in a sense, they, they actually use the term old forests rather than ecological reserve. That's that's some some translation that needs to happen. They call for old forest covering about 9% of the landscape generally speaking, and in some cases, it might require work to get to that. In some cases, the old forest already exist and they simply should be passively managed or are left as ecological reserves for ecological processes to to occur in other cases that there's some restoration might be needed before that can happen. I think that we need to increase the proportion of class two lands, lands in which some management is allowed but generally speaking they're managed for the purpose of biodiversity. And this is what really needs analysis. So I think that shifting that that balance from more class three to more class two. And again, you know, I'm using class two to be really analogous with or comparable with natural resource management area as defined on page six of the version of the bill that I'm looking at. Yeah, we need to identify. Go ahead. I actually would like to just point out I think that you're using a few terms to talk about the same things and I want to just say like, I think you're meeting class one to be what we're calling an ecological reserve area. Class two to be a biodiversity conservation area. Is that correct. That's correct. Yes, that's correct. And I thank you. Thank you. I'm really glad that you with this slide you brought up the class one nine to 10% or more referencing conservation design and how it does call for about 9% old forest. I actually been really wondering about that number. That number comes from but but even more, whether it's really, whether it really is enough on you alluded to the fact that we have many different forest types here in the state. And if we, you know, set aside only a 9% goal, but then sort of divide that by all the different types of farce it seems like we could easily find ourselves, you know, missing important pieces in that category so I would love to hear more about your thoughts about needing more and how and how that fits in. Thank you representative Sackiewicz. This is a great question you will see that I put four more in a sort of big, big sense. This is a really minimal goal for for old forest mirrors quite well the regional goal of the Wildlands and Woodlands collaborative which produced the report that I've been talking about the Wildlands in New England report, which calls for about 10% of the New England landscape to be in old forest. Ecological reserve essentially, but they have been in this new report they are also talking about and analyzing whether that is enough and really questioning whether that is enough. I'll be completely honest and it is frankly a balance between the need and the practicalities. So, so it is, it is not an arbitrary number but it is also not completely reflective of science it's a balance between science and practicality. Does that help. Yes. But I just also I would just love to underscore the fact that it, it does seem like that should be our minimum as a goal not, you know, say and not to think that we've hit 9%. We're done. We don't need to do anymore because I do think that we're at least it seems to me I'm not an expert but that will, we will still be missing a good chunk of, you know, the forest types ourselves to 9%. I, I go ahead. I just want to respond. That's fine. Thank you, representative Sackiewicz. I agree. And I, I also think that we will be missing things. I will though say that you will hear more about how this was developed in Vermont conservation design and specifics about I hope about how this number was was arrived at also there are very specific if you look closely at the technical of Vermont conservation designer specific goals for each biophysical region for old forests and the next and work that really needs to be done is for each forest type for each natural community type how much of each is needed. And so, so those details yes will be have been dug into to some extent and will be more. Great. And then to sort of follow up a little bit on the, on the old forest. So theme, we have lots of habitats that aren't for us and, and that should also be allowed to become old. And so I'm just sort of wondering how, how that fits in. We don't really hear a lot about old forest, old growth forest but we don't really hear so much about the other types of habitats that we have that that would, I would think very likely benefit from from being undisturbed for very long periods of time. How does that all fit in. Yes, could you give an example just so I know what you're talking about. Um, well just anything that's not a forest and you did talk about bogs and, you know, and there's other kinds of weapons and presumably grasslands and well they're these are all these different types that that exist in our in our state. Good, good, very, very, very good point yes and some of those the like a couple of the bog and the Fenn that I showed you earlier. Those are our ones that need to be in ecological reserves they need to be in the class one. So if we have, if we have a goal of old forest of nine to 10%. And then we add all those other habitats in that also need to be in class one then yes absolutely we're going to bump up that number women need more of the ecological reserve class, or at least the, the natural resource man or the biodiversity conservation area class to accommodate to protect to best protect all of those other features. Other features that might that might belong in there include so we talked about, we talked about old forest we talked about state significant natural communities, and also riparian areas, so many riparian areas might might really best go in that highest protection class. Thank you. Okay, so I guess the fourth bullet on here identify features that need specific protection. And that's what we were just talking about what are those features what are those natural communities and what classes do they do they each really are they best protected by. As we talked earlier distribute the conserve lands by elevation and by bio physical region and by geology, even within bio physical regions. So I'm going to actually conclude here with just some sort some of the sources and some of the information that's out there this is old 2002 but there's a lot of great information in this. There's a document which is available just by googling it, and it, but it's interesting, it is interesting to look at data that are 20 years 20 plus years old. But, but many of the concept concept still apply but this is sort of the underpinning of what we're doing. Now, the 2016 work by the Nature Conservancy and ongoing on their resilient and connected lands for terrestrial lands and waters actually it is now for for terrestrial and and aquatic conservation so it's been expanded since this. The Wildlands and Woodlands partnership Wildlands and Woodlands farmlands and communities published this report in 2017, which as I said somewhat mirrors. Some of our goals and I would really encourage you to follow this and to consider joining in regional con conversations about these efforts. I'll just say that I think that that one of the things that the partnership is working on is really trying to forge more regional New England wide partnerships and I know that you've had conversations with joining states about this and so forth just really encouraging that of Vermont conservation design this is the summary report from 2018 and worth you again you know I hope that you'll hear more detail about that and then this work which I've mentioned which is in press right now Wildlands and New England past present and future report summary and there will be a Vermont based summary of this work as well so. Look, look for that to come. And if there are any further questions, I'm here. Thank you for your testimony. Do members have further questions. My name is Smith. I do thank you. Thank you. That was a very interesting presentation. I have a question for you. What would you suggest that you might want to do differently to protect our waterways if you started right now. What would you suggest we do protecting our waterways, a key component of protecting our waterways that was identified in Vermont conservation is protecting the lands adjacent to our waterways so riparian buffers on our rivers and streams simply simply reducing the amount of disturbance of land disturbance on rivers and streams and providing natural lands adjacent to our rivers and streams is probably the primary or the most efficient and effective tool for protecting our waterways. And so that's, yeah, that's that's my, I guess my one line answer. All right, thank you. Thank you again for your testimony. You're welcome for witness this morning so they take a five minute break and come back at 10 till. We're going to reconvene our meeting and welcome Charlie Hancock forster welcome back Charlie. I'm sorry my computer is being wonky. Hi, Chair Sheldon and members of the committee. It's great to see you again. Sorry, I couldn't be the person today but I'm going to run out to the woods right after this just try to get some work done before this brutal cold snap sets in. So for the record, my name is Charlie Hancock, I'm a consulting forester based in Montgomery. I work across the northern tier of the state with private landowners. I'm also co founder and president of cold holiday Canada, which is a regional conservation partnership based up here in seven towns at the northern end of the Greens. And I also have served on the board of the Vermont land trust proposed to a decade and so the issues around conservation and easements are pretty close to my heart. I also currently serve as the vice chairman of the working lands enterprise board or the private sector lead there so issues of working lands and rural economics are also always front of mind. I also serve as a member of the ecosystem subcommittee of the Vermont climate council, and I mentioned that last one, because one of the objectives that we advanced out of a subcommittee to the final cap plan was the recommendation to meet the 30 by 30 objectives that we're considering here. So I'm really glad to see that they're back in H 126. I was going to make a joke about it being drowned hog day and we're back. Yeah. It's great to feel this being being back. So I have some prepared testimony that I'll walk through but as always, you know, feel free to jump in with questions or conversations so feel free to interrupt me whatever. I'm talking about kind of importance of objectives I fully support and applaud the objectives outlined in this bill. We need to invest in strategic conservation with Vermont conservation design as we've heard acting as a guiding plan for these prioritization efforts. And we've heard a lot about this but you know we always need to consider the moment that we're in and why we need this planning effort. We need to consider the climate impacts that our forests are seeing that we've spoken about the need for mitigation and adaptation in these efforts. We need to consider, as you've heard from Jamie Fidel and others Ryan mentioned this earlier that we're looking at a current pace of forest loss estimated at around 15,000 acres being converted on an annual basis to development. And those are real and if we're going to maintain a healthy productive and resilient landscape that defines our communities and continues to provide a critical ecological function as well as supporting the working lands economies that our rural communities depend on. We need to start thinking about how to do that. And this bill does that. I also want to touch briefly when we think about importance on economic importance because it's often not something that we think about in the terms of conservation context. But it's but it's critical and it's a big part of why we're talking about this in 2018 the trust for public lands and number of partners commissioned a report on the return on investment in land conservation. It's not a copy of the executive summary to the committee so it should be somewhere around to refer to if you'd like to the full report is available online. But that study found that for every $1 invested in land conservation, the state returns $9 an economic value to the Vermont economy, and that one to nine economic return is, I think a pretty good or child investment. So, you know, state investment in land conservation supports, you know, not just the ecological functions that we're talking about but also critical industries in Vermont, such as forestry farming up to recreation tourism that all depend on the availability of high quality protected land and water conservation investments support these jobs that are important industries, and they really reinforce Vermont strong sense of place. The forest products industry alone, which is where I find myself most days supports over 11,000 jobs in the state and generates over 1.5 billion in economic output. The land base that we're talking about here provides the foundation for that. There's an interesting fiscal angle here in the land conservation saves Vermont money through avoided costs and pressures on expensive infrastructure and other municipal services required by residents and in towns, you know, thinking about things like roads schools police fire protection research in Vermont has found that on average, property tax bills are lower, not higher in towns with the most conserved lands. So, I think that with the Montgomery select board and having just finished our FY 24 municipal budget, I can tell you that, you know, the tax tax rate and municipal budgets, you know, our front of mind in all of our communities. I also want to note that we are in a housing crisis right and so sometimes we find ourselves looking at conservation or development, and in a way paying them against each other and, and we don't have to. I think just the fact that Vermont has an entity like the Vermont housing and conservation board is a perfect example of how Vermont has been a leader in this balance. So those are kind of some framing things that I think about as we have this conversation. So, some highlights to touch on from the bill. The categories used to differentiate between the different types of reserves that we've talked about today are critically important acknowledging that all of these categories will have to be part of the reserve system that we're looking to create. In doing this the bill touches on what is currently a pretty contentious issue within the forestry and conservation community, and one that I alluded to last time I was in committee when I spoke about how we're having the conversation and the need to avoid creating wild stichotomies around this. The conflict is really kind of a reemergence from decades past of a debate between advocates for exclusive use for passive management, the newly termed phrase for that and parts of the community is pro forestation. And being put it against those that are making the case for sustainable or ecological management, or the triad model for conservation that we're looking at here. And that model really argues for a holistic approach to forest management combining both passively managed reserves and sustainable forestry. You know, the fact that we should not rely on a single approach is not a new idea by any means, but seems to have been lost a little bit in the recent conversation about these things. Some of this debate is clearly just beneath the surface of h126, but the bill does a really nice job of not endorsing any singular approach, rather it uses the three categories of ecological reserves biological reserves and national resource areas to encompass the spectrum of options that we need. And my mind exactly as it should. So, Bravo on that. Well itself, called mainly for the inventory and assessment work that would need to set the stage for conservation actions and further designations. Well at this point shining away a little bit on kind of how we actually do that which I think is a completely reasonable first step. It puts the work largely in the hands of the agency of natural resources. I do think that how we're providing capacity for that is important. And I would ask if the committee has discussed at all attaching a funding appropriation to the bill. If Anna leads this, they are going to need, you know, support and funding to stand up the work and potentially add staff around it. As the work moves forward, I think we also really need to understand that this must be a partnership across all entities in the state. We really need to be broad and inclusive in this conversation, we're going to need philanthropic partners land trusts conservation organizations. We need to follow these at the table because at the end of the day, primarily those other entities that will be executing the plan, not just a and R. You know we can't forget that Vermont is 75% forested, of which 80% is privately owned Liz touched on this. Section nine of the what's in the plan portion of the bill highlights acquisition of land. We need to be clear that conservation easements on privately held land will be critical. This cannot all be on state land. Relatedly regarding state lands on section five of that same section of the bill highlights the need for an assessment of how state lands will be used to increase ecological reserve areas. Similar to Matt's earlier comments, I would suggest potentially rephrasing that highlight how state lands can meet, can meet each of the three reserve categories. Can't forget that state lands remain a critical component of our working for us, while also acknowledging the opportunity that's there for continuous improvement in our management of them, and also for the potential for those ecological the ecological reserves there. And a few other points as we kind of look forward with the work. You know as we look ahead we need to continue to address how we promote sustainable forest management practices which together support biodiversity and community and climate resilience. We also need to think about how we reinvest in the land itself. It's not just about protection. It's often about restoration. We have larger conversations around climate adaptive management, like we've talked about before, managing for old forest condition addressing basis species. Accessional pathways have been disrupted by past land use. Those are all things that need to be kind of considered in here and we think about, you know, protection but also restoration. Also tied to this is how this plan supports the working lens economy. You know, which has a conservation factor in and of itself. We need to ask ourselves, how does this plan act in partnership with viability goals there, both ecological and around community and rural economic development. Looking at the moment we're in. I'm seeing that there's a parallel here with the forest futures plan that's always that's also being worked on the legislature and I think that's fantastic. At the end, we need to invest in the workforce and structure that support vibrant working lands economy in and of itself. Again, that's a big piece of keeping our landscape intact. So without getting too far off track. I'll just put in a brief plug for the governor's budget allocation of $4 million to the working lens enterprise initiative this year with $3 million in base funding in out years. And also, when we think about moving forward, we need to consider how to other programs such as current use dovetail dovetail with this work, as that will be an important consideration as we move forward. You know, how are we thinking about those supporting programs and the complimentary programs here, and how they will play an important role and you know what conservation is. I don't think we need to hammer out kind of every aspect of that in the bill itself because we can get pretty deep in the weeds. We need to do that now but you know I think through the development of this plan that will be an important consideration and I see you know parts of that in the bill which I think is great. And there's the cost of executing the plan, which section nine of the bill touches on. We really need to include a realistic framework of that in this this plan of action around how we pay for this, the activities to meet 30 by 30 objectives. It's not going to be cheap. You know I can highlight some recent work that my organization called how the Canada did with the Department of Environmental Conservation on a regional conservation partnership program project, where we were looking to land about $3 million in easement funding up in our neck of the woods. And we advanced about 14 different parcels totaling I want to say about 2500 acres. And when we looked at the costs of appraisals, weagles, the needs for bargain sales and some of these areas. We burned through that money pretty quickly. And so it's just one example to show that this work takes money and you can use it up pretty quick. We're going to have to think about how we do that but a bright spot here is that for months land conservation programs have a really strong track record of maximizing the impact of state investments by leveraging non state sources. For example, every conservation acquisition that receives state funding between 2008 and 2018 was matched at least dollar for dollar by non state funding, which is a big deal because we're right now coming into a time of unprecedented funding for land conservation through certain federal actions like America the beautiful. So how we're aligning our work with federal funds and those 30 by 30 objectives in leveraging outside support is going to be really important. So I think our preferred partners of ours trade he used the phrase resource magnet. I love that term because we really need to align what we're doing with federal funding opportunities, so we can continue to land as much outside money in the state to make this work. So what I'd love to do is kind of tie how this, the work in this bill is reflective in parallel or complimentary to work already happening out on the landscape. So if it's, if it's okay and if it's possible to share my screen. I would like to touch on some of the work that old holiday Canada has done in our region if that's okay with everybody. It's great. I can find the right window. Everybody can see that now. So, so cold holiday Canada, again which is original conservation partnership working up in seven towns on the northern end of the Green Mountains. We've been around for about a decade we released a strategic plan 2021 looking at the next five years of our work. And that's about for stewardship but also for conservation. So part of that we thought about what are our priorities, thinking a lot in terms of parallels with the ideas outlined in this bill. And so just to kind of recap I think we talked about this last time but cold holiday Canada is an effective conserving an additional 23,000 acres in our region by 2030. You know this region spans seven towns. That's nearly 170,000 acres along the northern spine of the Greens here, or forest blocks account for approximately 117,000 or about seven or about 70% of our region. We began our work about 23,000 acres were conserved through state ownership or private conservation easements. And our objective is again to double that for a total of about 46,000 acres or 40% of core forest blocks in our region. That's 40% is higher than 30%, but I think we like to take the idea that if you shoot for the moon even if you miss you're going to land among the stars and so aim high right. I'll point out that our work focuses primarily on working for us, but we do include passively managed reserves, and those happen here at multiple scales and that's important to think about. The last project we worked on to local partner was the burnt mountain project with TNC that was 11,000 acres you can see that down in the kind of south eastern portion of Montgomery. I can look at it up my window right here. It's an 11,000 acre wilderness reserve that was created. So we're looking at big scales for that kind of impact but we're also thinking about smaller scales. So oftentimes that triad approach can occur on the same landscape, and often on the same conserved parcel. Liz mentioned riparian areas which is a great example. So on any given example any given property we might look at carving out a significant subset of, you know riparian corridors at specific buffer areas based on geologic or ecological features, on the other side those as reserves, which are complementary to, you know more lightly managed or intensively managed lands and so one thing to think about here is that when we think about conservation and these different reserve categories. It's not doesn't have to be exclusive to any one parcel, you know we can think about these things on one parcel, which might make measuring them and counting them a little more difficult, but in executing them on the landscape it's going to be an important consideration. So, the work called holiday Canada did to kind of come up with this conservation priority map. We started by kind of thinking about connectivity and resiliency. We worked with some work in nature conservancy had done to think about biodiversity flows through the landscape. And this is literally how animals and plants are able to move across the landscape over time, in response to things like the impact of climate change. And again, leaning on work that had been done by our partners. So I can't applaud their work and their help with this enough. In addition to thinking about biodiversity flows we also consulted Vermont conservation design, a lot of the work that Liz talked about, and thought really strongly about connectivity blocks. You know, where, where specifically are our, our animals can be moving across the landscape and so we looked at where these forest blocks that provide that connectivity and then where are these literal functional pathways showing up within those areas. And how can we direct conservation efforts there. The diversity of the physical landscape itself and how we've got different kind of categories of representation. We've got areas that are representative. You know, things that might be rare and unique here in Vermont, but we also have areas that we think about as responsibility areas things that might be common here in Vermont but are rare and the rest of the region thinking across that northern forest we talked about last time. So if you take all of these things and you kind of layer them together. You end up with this kind of a prioritization map that we're looking at here. So I, I don't show that to kind of say that this is exactly what the state should do, but I just highlight it because there are efforts out there that are happening at various scales to think about these this work. And therefore, as we kind of move forward with this we're going to have to create a big tent and bring in all of our partners to think about what we're doing and then how we're going to do it again you know the state isn't going to have the magic bowl it's going to make it happen. It's going to be our local conservation commissions are individual landowners are regional partnerships are statewide entities like Vermont Land Trust and trust Republic lands and all of those great organizations. So, I'll end there and I'm really happy to answer questions or have some conversation. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you madam chair. Thank you again for your testimony. You had mentioned that the work can all the work can be done just on state land. So do I take it to mean like, you can envision the state at some point needing to purchase land from private landowners to make this happen or just more or less encouraging those private landowners to help in the efforts. So I think your state acquisition of lands is always an opportunity. You know if there's ecologically important areas or opportunities to expand existing forest blocks I mean we've got a parcel here richford that we're talking with the state with talking to the state with right now, which could potentially expand the J State forest. So when opportunities like that exist, I think state acquisition of lands could be a critical tool. But I think my, my comment was a little bit more directed at the idea that we think about, you know, again 75% forested 80% as in private ownership, we're not going to be able to meet all these objectives on state land alone. And so when we think about some of these conversations that are being had around all of our state lands to be passively managed. We're not going to be over simplifying things and not appreciating what private lands can also add and appreciating the contribution of state lands make in the active management area. So I don't think we should be lumping and pushing to extremes, but considering all of our options. Thank you. Charlie wears a lot of hats. So this is a great opportunity to ask your questions about from everything like how does forestry work to big picture conservation. So here with us again for the second time, but if you're wondering if you should ask a question, feel free. Thank you, Charlie. I'm just curious just in terms of the regional importance here of what we do in Vermont. And what are our neighboring states doing around biodiversity initiatives. Yeah, that's a great question. So that work is happening on multiple scales with multiple partners. Liz brought up the Woodlands Wildlands. I'm sorry that's the book she wrote, which is a great book by the way. The Wildlands. Forget it. The work I did basically thinking about on a new England wide basis, how much of what categories we need. So organizations like that that are looking planning on a large level, but they're also coordinating. The first one that we did was the founder of a regional conservation partnership network. And so every year groups like cold holiday Canada, get together and talk about this work what are we doing how are we doing it what information are we using. And those partnerships happen at various scales, cold holiday Canada is, you know, one seven town area, some of these regional conservation partnerships spans state boundaries. It's all the way up in Connecticut River. So when we can come together and work together in those capacities we can get a lot more done. I'll point to a lot of the research that's been done. We look at Vermont conservation design here in Vermont but other states have initiated similar programs and also thinking about the nonprofit sector you know TNC has been a great partner in thinking about some of this data around regional pathways and landscapes and some of the data that we used here in our cold holiday Canada strategic plan. So, thank you Liz for pointing out for shooting me the cheat sheet it's Wildlands and Woodlands farmland and communities is the report Highstead put out, which I have a copy of here I think in my bookcase but right next to Liz's book actually. The benefits of zoom. Great. Other questions. Not seeing any thank you for your testimony this morning. Great. Well, like I said always happy to have to chat with the committee and if there is a chance to get outside in the woods at some point that would be great. And if you have a chance to go out with Liz, take it. I have had such great times in the in the woods with Liz looking at everything from little mosses to how deep you can stick poles into the ground and bogs to appreciate the depth of that, you know that functionality there so get out of the committee room sometimes and check it out in the world. Thanks so much. Thank you for that reminder and and thank you for taking the morning off and and joining us. Awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you. Alright members, further discussion on each one 26 anything else that you want to speak to the whole committee about that we will adjourn for the morning we're back on at 115. Good afternoon and welcome to the Vermont Legislature's Committee on environment and energy this afternoon. We're going to continue our discussion of each one 26 and our first witness this afternoon is Chris Campany. Welcome, Mr. Campany. Glad to be here. Is there a little bit of a lag? If you go to full screen will be all set. I am. But there we go. All right, good. All right. Great. Well, thank you for having me. You want me to just go ahead and proceed. Okay. I'm Chris Campany, Executive Director, Wyndham Regional Commission. I'm here to testify in support of each one 26. The Wyndham Regional Commission includes 23 towns in Wyndham County, Reesboro, Searsburg and Wind Hall and Bennington County and West End and Windsor County over an area of approximately 940 square miles. And I asked my GIS person to tell us how many how many how much of our area is already conserved as 26.4%. I guess we could get a little bit more precise than that. But our mission is to assist towns in southeastern Vermont to provide effective local governance and work collaboratively with them to address regional issues. I'll also serve as the chair of the Vermont Connecticut River Watershed Advisory Commission, which is the Vermont half of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions. And I serve on the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Council, the Forest Stewardship Committee and the Friends of Conti Executive Committee. And I'll get into that in a moment. Now, while the Wyndham Regional Commission has neither deliberated upon or taken a position on this bill, it is consistent with the goals and objectives of the Wyndham Connectivity Collaborative, through which the Wyndham Regional Commission is working with municipalities, the agency of natural resources and other stakeholders on the exploration of habitat protection and improvement policies and implementation strategies within the Wyndham Region as a whole. And a roughly 90 square mile area in the southeastern quadrant where you can see the red arrow of our region, which is a significant habitat linkage referred to as a southeast connector. If you look at the staying connected initiative maps, you'll see that that's one of those critical linkages. And the reason why that one in particular, we call that one out, is that western area, that's a lot of U.S. Forest Service and other lands. And then with Conti National Wildlife Refuge assuming ownership from the Nature Conservancy of Gleed Mountain, that's going to add another chunk in that western range. That southeastern quadrant, those are much smaller land holdings. And so that's why it's really critical to work with towns on policies, landowner initiatives and other things on connectivity there. This effort was originally funded through a grant from the High Meadows Fund and we're continuing to piece together resources to work on this. I'll get a little bit more into detail on that as well. Vermont's principal planning goal is to plan development so as to maintain historic settlement pattern of compact village and urban centers separated by rural countryside. And that's in 24 VSA 4302. So just as we need to create conditions necessary to make compact settlement possible, prioritizing lands and habitat for conservation and developing effective policy and tools to protect and conserve those lands are essential. H126 calls for the development of a conservation plan. And notice that the Secretary of Natural Resources shall solicit comment from various stakeholders including RPCs. Now because the state's 11 regions are where many of the state policy initiatives and programs come together and because many towns rely on us for support of their natural resource planning initiatives as well as town plan and zoning development, robust engagement with us would benefit the proposed conservation plan process and product. We plan for natural resources and water quality, land use, transportation, hazard mitigation and energy to name a few. We engage in Act 250 and Section 248 proceedings, serve as the GIS and mapping resource for our respective regions and support municipal planning commission and conservation commission initiatives. Through our work we have considerable knowledge of the landscapes and communities of our respective regions right down to nearly every town road stream crossing. And the reason for that is one of the favorite things that we do for our towns on a very practical level are our municipal road and bridge inventories. And also then we supported them in the municipal road general permit road erosion inventories and that literally meant staff have been out on pretty much every square every foot of road. Even class four town roads we had interns bike in, hike in, run in and look at what the situations were there. Did you have what I know DEC lecture first was puking gullies or other things you know even out on the class four town roads. So we literally and then I'll mention this later on but we maintain collectively the RPCs maintain a really comprehensive database of these town bridges and culverts. And one of the things I'm going to mention is we already maintain that this wouldn't necessarily this isn't in this bill but just something for you to think about for later on. Might it make sense for us to train up staff got they'd be pretty straightforward and aquatic and terrestrial organism passage through those things and include those in our database. The state already has that in their database. But that may be something we want to look at. But because we are given the breadth and scope of our work and responsibilities, we are relatively unique among the other stakeholders cited in the bill. And to that end I recommend the bill be amended to direct the secretary to collaborate with Vermont's 11 regional planning commissions as a group not particularly individually in the design of the conservation plan and its implementation. Because almost invariably a lot of this work will eventually fall to the regions to at least support or be engaged in and I think helpful to everybody involved if we're involved in the design of the plan and implementation strategies up front just because of the experience and knowledge that we have. Now I know right now the RPCs, the directors meet monthly. We talked about this bill briefly. Some RPCs are still considering it. There's I would say general support. There's some who have questions but this specific provision they all encourage me to bring up. A conserved land category that seems to be missing is habitat corridors. Some of which may not be large in size but are nonetheless critical to connecting habitat blocks. And these two guys are, I call them my trail cam is wandering through our property which has Mill Brook which goes through Townsend. Often these are stream and river corridors and associated wetlands and may include bridges and culverts. And these are areas in need of protection by policy and regulation and or easements and by private municipal landowner education and action. It may include improvements to bridges culverts and other built infrastructure to accommodate aquatic and terrestrial organism passage. I'm glad to see aquatic ecosystems included in the bill language because oftentimes I think those may be not as well appreciated because I think sometimes you think about an aquatic ecosystem. You think about an ocean or a lake. Like in our region, the West River, there are unique organisms, both plants and animals including muscle species that are unique to our stretch of the West River. And that's why both Nature Conservancy and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Continental Wildlife Refuge is interested in the West River because of those unique aquatic ecosystems. So glad to see that in there. So I would encourage, so let's see. RPCs have the potential to provide both and benefit from data related to these information about these corridors and to include these lands and our regional plans and policies and use this information to the benefit of Townsend, their planning commissions and conservation commissions. So to that end, I would suggest amending the Section 2801 of the bill definitions to include habitat corridors and adding language to Item 5 to include habitat corridors among the other areas cited to be conserved. A possible definition of habitat corridor could be connections across the landscape that link up areas of habitat. I specifically suggest the term habitat corridors as opposed to wildlife corridors to reflect the movement of both flora and fauna through the landscape. We're talking plants getting up and walking, right? But just the way that they move through a landscape through seeds or lots of different ways that they kind of move through a landscape as we experience greater climate change, it gives them a better opportunity to basically move their genetic material through a landscape as well. And I'd like to make a few other points related to the subject of the bill if not necessarily the bill itself. RPCs could be a far more valuable resource for state land agencies than we are at present. I'd recommend they more fully engage with us in the development of their plans and projects as we can provide valuable insight. And I have not reached out yet to Forest Parks and Recreation about this, but this could also include more engagement of RPCs in deliberations around the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Similar to our engagement on the Urban and Community Forestry Council and the Forest Stewardship Committee, I'll note that we are, at least our region, serves as a resource for land trust because of our local knowledge and the ability to make connections with towns and facilitate engagement with them. As I mentioned before, RPCs maintain a database of municipal bridges and culverts in their condition that is quite comprehensive with proper training of our staff. This database could be used to capture data and information about aquatic and terrestrial organism passage of these town structures and could be updated as we conduct bridge, culvert, and road erosion inventories. We're actually in conversation with EMS Amherst Designing Sustainable Landscapes Project because they're taking multiple data layers, analyzing them, and kind of doing fairly detailed passes at potential corridors that relate not only to where rivers and streams and other potential corridors exist, but also they tie that into characterizations of bridges and culverts and their ability to pass aquatic organisms and terrestrial organisms or not. And so we're really interested in how their model can be applied to our Windham Regional Connectivity work and then also provide information for our regional planning and municipal planning. And I spoke with the Agriculture and Forestry Committee about this. Farms and working forests have an important role in habitat conservation and connectivity. We need to understand how well federal and state programs are or are not working for them and what can be done through current and new state programs. Furthermore, the economic viability of our farms and the economical being of those in the farm economy are essential to keeping farms as farms. The health of the farm economy is essential to ecosystem and carbon sequestration functions that farming provides. And a related matter is the need to understand the extent to which farms and forests are being or will be converted to other uses. While farms do produce greenhouse gas emissions and need to manage for water quality, conversion to residential subdivisions or other development will arguably produce more emissions and compromise water quality and quantity. Sale of farmland is often a retirement strategy for farmers even when passing the land down to the next generation and it also may be necessary to pay off debts. I'm not aware that the Agency of Agriculture, I've reached out to them before while I was on the Climate Council to see if they or any other agency tracks the subdivision of farmland or the conversion of its use to other purposes. And I'm not saying we need this to say you can't do that, but it'd be really helpful for the state regions and municipalities to have this information to know what's happening and what's likely to happen. And related to this is farm and forest land conversion are the five lot and nine lot loopholes in Act 250. Act 250 is not triggered by the subdivision of five lots or fewer in one acre towns that is towns without zoning or nine lots or fewer in ten acre towns that's towns with zoning. Over a five year period and farm and forest can be developed under the radar. Zoning is not a panacea either. Rural sprawl continues to be the default development pattern in our region and the state as a whole. This is what we call a measles map. This happens to be Marlboro. I'm not picking on them in the least, but this is just fairly typical zoning that a lot of our towns have. And what you're seeing here is a hypothetical map. This land would not all be developed for a number of different reasons, including just whether it's desirability or ability to get a driveway in. It may be landlocked, but it shows what can happen under the the town's two acre zoning scenarios, ten acre zoning scenarios, 27 acres and two acres. I'm not saying this is the wrong thing. They have amended their zoning bylaws to provide better protection of streams and rivers. And some other corridors, which is great and it fits into the goals of this bill. But I bring this up just to say that, you know, not this committee, but sometimes what I will hear is if only towns would include more information in their town plan. And if only they would include it in their zoning, but it is not a magic bullet. And so we just need to realize that. I'm not saying and I don't have the magic. I don't know. Can't snap my fingers and magically fix it. And on the Act 250 question, I'm not suggesting every acre of land be regulated under Act 250, but it's part of the context that we need to think about. Vermont is challenging because we have a very diffuse land use planning structure spread across, you know, over, you know, about 250 towns. And, you know, regions, we have standing Act 250 and Section 248. That's only for projects of regional significance. And we really don't, we don't see a lot of those generally they're related to when it comes like the housing or other larger development is related to resorts. It's not other subdivisions. So just wanted to just just bring to your attention that I do think, you know, having more understanding about how to maintain these larger blocks. And connecting those blocks is important as we look at this larger context. And the other challenge that, yeah. Going back to the previous map, does it really look like the measles line up with the zoning districts? If we, if I could do an overlay, it would do better. That also the scale of the maps is a little different too. But yeah, you can see like a good way to orient yourself is the red on the map. I think that's their village district and the way that lines up over on the other side. That's kind of my point. The village district looks very similar to the two acre district. That's because it is two acres zoning in the village. In the village? It's hard not to have two acres zoning in a village when you don't have wastewater because by default then your zoning is pretty much practically it's two acres. And that's the next point I was going to make is if you look at that southwest southeast quadrant, all those red dots, those are compact settlements, village centers without water or wastewater. And so all those villages that could potentially be places for really well designed infill housing or village adjacent housing and helping us to achieve housing at scale until we actually have the infrastructure to support it. You're zoning all you like, but if you can't, if you don't have the wastewater infrastructure in place, you're not going to get it. And so from a lot of our villages, you're not going to be able to add a single dwelling unit, you know, accessory or otherwise, because on a half acre lot in a village was septic and well shadowing each other. And then also with your existing, you know, country stores, village markets and other things like that, where you need public water supplies. You know, with all the other septic systems around in the shadowing, it's really hard for them to do anything that would in that would intensify their wastewater production or the drinking water demands. So until we figure out how to do a better job of actually creating the infrastructure conditions to make compact settlement possible, rural Spock's brawl will remain remain the default yet to have anybody provide you with facts to refute that. But right now that where you can build, generally speaking, is in our towns with water and wastewater. And there are some limitations there. And then our villages, which, you know, a lot of them are already walkable, bikeable, that create greater housing choice for seniors or other people who could really be well suited by multifamily housing units. And our villages, I think you know, we benefit from having really large houses connected to barns and other things. So you can do infill development with multifamily housing that fits really well within that physical context. And that then creates more people and pedestrian traffic for the businesses. It makes all the all the other goals of like the climate action plan, the comprehensive energy plan or transportation plans, the state's primary other other principal planning goals compact settlement surrounded by rural countryside is critical. It's also really, really hard. We've worked with towns on conversations just get working with towns to have the conversation about pursuing wastewater. And then we have a community that actually has a grant to put in two village wastewater systems, but they're struggling within the larger populace to convince the town to actually take the money that they've now been have gotten. And so we're working with them and this can take many, many years. It's not an engineering problem. It's a planning problem. And we really need to need to have more conversations statewide about this is not just about providing some people with wastewater systems and other people without it. This is about village vitality. It's about the health concerns of the people who live in these places where which were designed and came to be before when we use water very differently. And how it relates to directly to housing and housing at scale habitat for humanity and other kind of, you know, one home solutions are great. But we were in a crisis mode. We're past crisis mode. And we need to figure out how to get housing at scale, you know, 25 100, you know, Brattleboro right now the current demand. And this is then the study was done prior to really taking into effect the people moving in during the pandemic surge. They need 500, you know, more than 500 housing units right now in our region. I'm sure it's in the thousands. But we're still talking about, you know, where can we do accessory dwelling units here and there. And if you're in a village, generally speaking, it's going to be really difficult to do that. Sorry to riff on that. But to my mind, this is absolutely the flip flip side of the coin when we're talking about land conservation. Because otherwise the only place you're going to build is large lot single family home development on class three town road. And these days with the prices, the way they are, even if that even if that is for a manufactured home, which may be less or a tiny home or something else. That is not an affordable housing solution. And I'm not talking subsidized housing. I'm talking about just affordability thinking about it as what any any household would spend 30% of their gross income or less on a given month on housing. And right now we're set up for, you know, really unsustainable situation. And I'm really concerned that as dairies go out, as we're having structure trouble in the forest sector, as families are aging. And, you know, as we start seeing property transfer between generations and people want to sell, you're going to see more and more subdivision of these larger parcels and further rural sprawl. And I don't have the magic wand to wave to fix it, but it's a challenge. So thank you for everything, actually. I'm sure we'll have you back to delve into this further when we get to housing issues here. But I'm curious if anyone has data on how many of those. I mean, the other way to look at that map is a hundred and one towns have water and sewer. What is the existing kind of capacity as anyone would. I don't expect you have any. I'm glad you asked. So I have been proposing for our region and for the state as well. And Laura heard me. I think presented or not. We've actually part of our conference of economic development strategy. It is a priority under our proposed are under the development priorities with agency of commerce and community development to develop an assessment of our existing wastewater capacity period in the region. And frankly, we need to do this statewide. And I made the pitch when the governor's cabinet came down to a meeting in Manchester and I'll make it again when they're in our region again this coming Monday. That we really statewide need to determine what the existing capacity is to tell this story because we as regions need it. The regional development corporations need it. The town planning commissions need it because it really does tell the story of frankly, if you want housing. Here's the here's your you either have the capacity to get it or you don't. And it's going to be really hard to go to the housing trust and ask for it. If or even private developers or anybody else if you don't actually have the capacity or like or here or then they're the flip side of the opportunities. Here's where we've got it. Where are the opportunities for infill development to really achieve it so that you can maximize the use of these these places that have that capacity. Or like I've been championing the development of housing on the was formerly the Austin campus. Now it's Winston Prouty the potential of like, you know, 150 to 300 units on that former campus. But even there it would need wastewater capacity extended to it. Right now the line is too small. And so, you know, how do we get funding put in place to make that happen? So I'm thrilled you asked that question. Happy to talk about it more. I'm sure others have lots of opinions on it as well. But I think it really, really, really benefit the state to have that work done. This is more than just what it was just going to take some fairly serious staff time. I've been trying to reach out to universities and others even classes to see if they might be able to do it. But I think it could be done using existing data. It's not like you need to be out there doing boring holes in soil and seeing what you've got. It's literally I have a whole proposal. I will send it to you. I don't want to go too far down the housing rabbit hole but if you have a question. Thanks so much. I just had a follow up. You said there's a town that has received the grant funding but the town is struggling to get the residents to say let's do it. Is that because there has to be a match or? It's real now. And so they've got the funding to do the engineering studies and do the design and engineering and actually implement the project. But now the question is OK. So what land in the village and around the village can you use for the we're talking these days right about distributed distributed soil based systems. And so now the challenge is on what land can you put that distribution system and what what decisions does the town have to make to do that. And so you know it puts the select board in a challenging position because sometimes select boards aren't necessarily signing up for making those kinds of like big infrastructure decisions right there. But they're more about developing budgets implementing budgets not making these big decisions and so I don't I'm not knocking them at all. I mean I've seen this not only in Vermont and else you know multiple art towns elsewhere too. It's just now the funding is there. And so sometimes you don't pay attention to it until it's in your hand. And so even though you may have been discussing it as a community for years and it's been discussed in multiple multiple plans and other things. Now you got it. The dog caught the car and now you got to figure out what to do with it. And so it's it's so it's not so much or it's the complexity of it. It's a complex and now and it also right it restarts the conversations that the town had once before. And and that's one of the unique roles that regional planning commissions can play and they've contract with us under some of the grants that they've gotten the wastewater grants they've gotten to actually help facilitate conversations within the town. About again the need for this not telling them you have to do it but more here are the facts you know and this is about like restoring the vitality of your village as to what they what they used to be. And a lot of our communities right this is all complicated because they are in floodplains or in river corridors. And so how do you then then improve the resilience of this of what's already there and then grow do the infill and grow the village away from those hazards. And so it just opens up all kinds of conversations are really the wastewater conversation is instead really a conversation about what do you want your village to be what do you what uses do you see in your village. How does that benefit the life of everyone in the town. How does it benefit the lives of those people who are already there and the businesses that are already there. This isn't about you know you know oftentimes I think visions go to suddenly we're going to just open up our village to all kinds of growth and we're going to look like generic suburbia. That's not going to be the case and even then we're talking again soil based system so it's going to be limited to what the soil caring capacity is. So so that's the nature of the conversation that happens and it's I totally get it. Thank you. And if you don't mind sending that right up that you've had. I'll do that. Yeah. So I'll wrap up and this is while state law can't direct certainly can't direct federal land acquisition and management practices we encourage federal land agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service here on Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior to engage with RPCs municipalities in their planning as early in the process as possible. Preferably before drafts is released for public comment. I joined the Friends of Conti and now serve on the leadership of that committee or that that organization specifically for this purpose to raise the issue of greater engagement with municipalities and regions. We've actually had real at our region really good conversations and relationships with the U.S. Forest Service. It was a bit more challenging actually with Department of Interior when Conti developed this plan is more with NGOs very little engagement with municipalities until the draft came out and then they asked for comments. But at that point the cake is pretty well baked and the frosting is generally on the cake. It just doesn't have the candles on it yet. In our region there seems to be general support for access to the public that federal lands provide. But there are always concerns about what the impacts will be of removing lands from the tax roll and the insufficiency of payments in lieu of taxes. Towns do still have costs associated with these lands including maintenance of town roads that are used for public land access and provision of emergency services as Laura knows in our region. Few towns some are set in Searsburg have incredible recreation assets lots of access to public lands but they really don't have that many outdoor businesses. And so to them when you start talking about increasing outdoor access to those lands and recreation what they look at it as is increased maintenance of their town roads to get to those places or increased emergency service needs. You know Somerset has a population of six but people get hurt there that don't live there right so they have to figure out how do we pay for that. And so that would be another that's another whole conversation but it's again part of this part of the piece I think we were talking about conservation strategies. How do we work better with our federal partners engaging with the municipalities to really come up with solutions that work well for for all the communities involved. And that's it. Thanks for your time. Thank you for your testimony. Have you ever set up any further questions? Hello. When you were talking about connectivity and the time and information you all have gained from doing your road and bridge inventories does that include things you've observed about invasives along the roadside? Yeah well in fact our staff have to protect themselves against them right like a giant hog weed and other things so they're all wrapped up where we know that it is. So we could do more potentially around tracking but this is generally like structure by structure so like knot weed and other things are going to be growing up that whole corridor. They tend to probably exist around these structures more because those are natural places where you're going to get scour and opening up of soil and so as things get carried along in floods you're going to see more things growing around those. Just like that's why you see stuff along roadside right they get carried by cars they get the soils more disturbed there. So yeah so we could probably do more there. We do do work on Endangered Species. We've been doing a lot of outreach especially through our Translation Planning Initiative programs with a road foreman on Emerald Ashbor and preparing for what's coming on that. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. I'm going to Catherine if you're ready for me to share screen I'll go ahead and do that. Good afternoon for the record my name is Trey Martin and I'm the Director of Conservation at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. I'm joined today by Polly Major who is the Policy Director. Many of you probably worked with Jen Holler over the years who retired last June and Polly joined us from Senator Leahy's staff and is filling that role now on our team and will probably be in the building in the room. So I wanted to make sure that that we introduce her today. We are here today to talk about H-126. I would like to offer a couple of comments about the transition from last year there was a bill very similar bill or almost identical bill that did pass through both bodies but wasn't signed by the governor. And I wanted to talk a little bit about some work that BHCB and our land trust partners have done in the interim since last summer. But before I get into that I thought it might be useful and maybe useful for me to just do a little bit a very quick intro of BHCB. I'm hoping that you'll invite us back to do a deeper dive on our full suite of programs through the line of the lines of what my colleague Chris Campi was talking about. We were working across the different phases of this question so on housing and rural community development and community development as well as conservation and rural enterprise. So it would be I hope I can wet your appetite today quickly. And then that while you're doing intros with folks that we could come back and bring just ceiling director and talk a little bit more length. So but today's topic really is conservation. So mostly going to focus on that. The picture behind me you know on this first slide is from the Bird Mountain Wildlife Management Area and Ira and Pauline Vermont. I think it's what people think of when they think about conservation. This is a really large addition to the wildlife management area of over 2,800 acres. There were multiple funding sources including BHCB trust fund federal funds local funds that resulted in this. What was one of the largest unbroken forest land tracks left in the state being added to that reserve. That means that you're getting all the benefits of wildlife connectivity or habitat connectivity as Chris referred to it. You're getting recreational benefits. You're getting the amenity value of having that resource in the community and you're getting it at a huge scale a landscape level scale. That's an example of a very large project. You can see BHCB statutory mandate here on the screen. You can also see the Equinox Highlands down in Bennington County, a little south of Bird Mountain. And this was this is a very large project that BHCB undertook several years ago and it's you can see the statistic there. It's among the 450,000 acres that BHCB has worked with partners to conserve since 1987. There are a lot of goals will we set about doing conservation work at BHCB. I talked about a few with respect to the wildlife management area, but here you're seeing a place that's very rich in habitat and biodiversity. It's another spot where there's a protection of an intact forest block. This also gives us, you know, many of the other values that unbroken or interior forests hold, including climate resilience, carbon storage and sequestration, recreational benefits which are often translated into economic benefits for the communities that they're in. The section here referred to section 302 of our enabling statute describes the eligible uses for the Housing and Conservation Trust Fund. You can see that behind me as well as the allocation system. How do we decide how to allocate between housing projects and conservation projects? And you can see the statutory framework there. You can also get a couple. I don't know what program here, but if you could go to full screen for the slides, it would make them more readable for us. It's possible. I would do that PowerPoint. I'm not sure. You don't know what that's. I don't recognize that, but if you can, if it's possible. How's that? Yeah. Yes. All right. Thanks. If you hadn't asked, I wouldn't have learned something new, which is really exciting for me. What program are you? I'm just a master of technology. I'm in PowerPoint, but I was in a PDF version of it, so I thought I was on the full screen. But I'm glad you can see this better, and I hope it's legible for folks at home as well who might be tuning in. Pictures here. One of the top pictures is Green River Reservoir, which probably if you've been over there and enjoyed paddling or camping on the reservoir, you know what an important conservation addition that was to the state. Below that you can see a Scottney Mountain and there's a, if you really zoom in, you can see the text there, which is from an article entitled the town that saved a mountain and the mountain that saved a town. And it really speaks to the again, like I said, the interconnection between economic health of our rural communities and the conservation projects that helped to draw visitors to those places. Keep going here. This is in Pond Highlands is what you're seeing here. This is in Athens, Brookline and Townsend, Vermont. This was a project that conserved over 500 acres. It had been managed for timber, but both the management plan for conservation afterwards focused on retaining stands of uneven age forest that provide habitat. This is a place that was rich in habitat for moose, for bear, Cooper Hawks, a number of really important species that we like to see foresters and loggers protect in the practices that they use on our working lands. Water based conservation is a big part of the HCB's mission. So the, the Morgan Street wetlands in Bennington is just one example, but we're working across the state. We protect waterways and watersheds and watershed health in conservation on farmland. We protected those waterways and conservation on forest land. And sometimes we just protect resources in communities that are valuable. You can see the paddlers here in Bennington who are using this. This was a connection from an affordable, a site where there's a lot of affordable housing in Bennington. It was a really important place for locals to get out and enjoy the spectacular views and opportunity to be out on the water. Huntington Community Forest, not a really fun project. Here you can see all the kiddos. So in addition to recreation for adults, recreational opportunities or outdoor education opportunities are something that we're looking at when we're working with, especially on community forests or town forests. What's the utility of this project for the town, for families, for the schools, for kids to get out there? There's some great projects around the state where you can see that the community has gathered around the resource. And it's not just the use and enjoyment of it, but the value that you get out of contributing to that planning, to that work that stewards the property and to the benefit of seeing the next generation be able to enjoy that space. A lot of work to be HCB with a number of different critical partners to protect our farmlands in Vermont through the acquisition of development rights. This is a map just in Addison County. You can see the VLT concerned land and land concerned by other organizations by the color code there. Again, if you submitted it would be easier. But the opportunities for multiple benefits when we conserve farmland are so important to stress. It is not just protecting the land base that produces our food, which Chris spoke very eloquently about before I sat down. There's opportunities for carbon storage and sequestration. A lot of the forest lands that, for example, Vermont Land Trust has conserved over the years is on working farms. So they're large parcels that have areas that are in farm production but are also large forest blocks as well that are protected or even managed towards older growth goals on those farmlands. And then over the years, the number of acres or linear feet of streams, number of acres of wetlands or linear feet of streams that VHCB has helped to protect when we protect farmland is truly staggering. Because at that point of conservation when we're often working at that intergenerational transfer point to protect something of perpetuity, we're able to inject more funding into a deal sometimes to permanently protect a wetland or protect with the offers that go beyond what's required by law, the farmland, which meets a lot of our goals in statute and the goals that we have for clean water in the state, but also helps farmers at that point of transition, making sure that they have the funds to either pay down debt or to transfer it to the next generation with enough money to restart operations. And so the last thing I'll say before I transition where to the bill and some of the work VHCB is doing is about the trinear family up in Highgate. This is one of the best stories that I've heard since coming to VHCB last year about farmland conservation. This is a multi-generational family that VHCB began working with in 1999. You can see the little picture inset there of what the farm looked like before they began working with VHCB and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, you know, the federal government. And over the years they have done so much with, they've been like that, the poster children with all stars of NRCS and the number of programs that they've accessed and they've done great things with that land, which includes clean water work, carbon storage and sequestration, high yield, soil quality. And in 2021 we nominated the trinears and they were awarded the Aldo Leopold Award for Conservation for New England, which most of you probably know who Aldo Leopold was, but he is the hero of the early conservation movement in this country. And so to see that outcome based on farmland conservation illustrates this really important point I want to leave you with, which is that we're working across multiple venues and multiple types of conservation strategies to do our work. Clean water, I mentioned that earlier, but in addition to direct water conservation, we're also under Act 76, one of the Clean Water Service Providers. So in the Memphromagic Basin, VHCB is doing the, you know, managing the formula grants to do extra regulatory work to improve watershed health. So not, again, not what's required by law, but investments that will help to meet the TMDL goal beyond those projects. And then we are supporting across the landscape rural enterprises, because in order to have a really healthy rural economy, we have to make sure that the farm enterprises, forest enterprises and, you know, recreational enterprises that thrive in those places are supported. So our Farm to Forest viability program, our Rural Economic Development Initiative programs have a tremendous impact on the ability of those businesses to thrive, which helps to protect that landscape in its unconverted state. I think that since 2017, the Rural Economic Development Initiative has invested $275,000, and we've helped small communities draw down over $10 million of grant funds from, you know, external sources. That's an 18 to 1 return on investment that you get out of those dollars. And the viability over 20 years has supported over 900 different farmer forest operations and helped them to do business planning or transfer planning, or other kinds of, you know, sort of enterprise goals that they might have. We have a question from representatives to tell you. Thank you, Trey. With regard to the ready program. So do you have, is there a map somewhere around geographic map around what regions of the state are accessing those funds? And do you know if there's any region that more accesses those than others or is it pretty evenly utilized throughout the state? And this is not a Chittenden County trip question, actually. We're looking around the kind of whole part of the state. Yeah, I don't have that. It is not the tip of my tongue that I can promise you that, but I'd like to see what we have. I'm sure that we've done some kind of graphic organization of the, you know, the businesses and towns that we've helped. I would say that the statute requires us to work with communities smaller than 5,000 people in population. And I think it's a pretty, just based on the projects I've seen since coming into my role, it's a pretty good distribution geographically around the state. But I think we can get you better data than that representative Sebelia. Thank you. My question is really centered around, I understand that some, so the kingdom, for instance, has a lot less regional planning capacity and development capacity. And so I'm trying to understand if this is actually utilized more in the kingdom, if it's kind of compensating for that or not. That's a good question. I would be happy to follow up on that. I appreciate that. So I'm going to transition. I would, like I said, I want to do a little teaser on VHCB generally in hopes that we could come back and talk about all those programs a little bit more. But we are here to talk about each 126 today. And we testified, got ceiling, the director, or executive director, and I testified last year in support of each six of six. And I'm here today to testify in support of each 126 because of the really important goals that it was established to drive our work. I don't see a scenario where having a statutory, having statutory goals that broadly and robustly encourage the state to invest in the many, many values that you get when you conserve and protect land. That there's simply it's so important that I really hope that the committee will help to move this forward again this year. I also wanted to talk a little bit about what happened in the interim time because when the, after the end of the session and the veto of the bill, the VHCB reached out to our partners in the land trust community and asked if they would like to proceed if we were willing to convene the partners and to fund and provide capacity to move that initiative forward before the next session, would they be interested in VHCB exercising its convening power to do that. And so we have been working since last June to establish a process to pick up where that bill left off and move it forward in a robust and thoughtful way. And to really think broadly about the goals that the bill had, but also to think in terms of the, you know, a lot of the practices and the examples that I showed you about the conservation work we do. So we've, we've, every, every initiative needs a name. So what we've been calling is that conservation strategy initiative. And look at this stage we work really well with partners to flesh out our goals and a process that I'm going to walk you through right now. I think it's one that would dovetail really nicely with the legislation that you're complimenting or that you're contemplating or complimenting what you're contemplating, if you will. And so you can see the goals there. I think what I want to highlight for you is the bolded language at the bottom is that the work we do is about protecting, maintaining, enhancing, healthy, ecologically connected and functioning, natural and working lands. That's, that's the long-term goal that we have. That's what Vermont Conservation Design is about. It's what the, the Biden administration's initiatives around America, the beautiful and staying connected are all about is, is maintaining a, almost a matrix approach to landscape management that begins with small compact settlements surrounded by working farms and forests, surrounded by recreation lands, then ultimately up into longer, forests that are managed for longer-term goals, old growth forests and forest reserve category type forests. We've been meeting with, initially you can see the, like the kind of the partners who we've been working with over the last couple of months, the two agencies of natural resources and agriculture, food and markets, as well as land trust partners, the Nature Conservancy, Vermont Land Trust, Trust Republic Land and Vermont Audubon. That's just been kind of a preliminary group to help us get this off the ground. And you can see the public stakeholders that we contemplate engaging with over the course of the next couple years listed below that. It's a really broad and inclusive list. We know that the committee in the legislature last year attended for this process to be broad and inclusive. So we're trying to name folks who are going to be in this, you know, right off the bat and, and hold ourselves accountable to doing to, to facilitating a, a very inclusive and powerful process over the time that it will take, which we think is a couple of years to really develop a thoughtful and comprehensive statewide plan. We've divided into a couple of phases, the way that we're thinking about it right now. When you're going to do planning work, you need to have a baseline or a catalog. And one of the things that was discussed and that's really missing is in agreement around what have we concerned, what have we protected? What are the other strategies that we've used to date? We need to, we need to memorialize that as we're getting started. So phase one of this work is all about creating that catalog, the different types of land protection strategies that we use, the acres protected, the funding sources that support those, the partners who do that work. We'll be able to organize that in a spatially explicit and shareable format and bring it back to you all as well as to educate the public about what Vermont has accomplished over the last 30, 40, 50, 60 years. We would do a lot of outreach and education around that at the completion of this, which we anticipate doing over the course of the spring and summer of this year. Trying to finalize that plan and have it shareable in the final form by the end of the summer. The second phase of the work. So building off of that catalog is to develop an adopted statewide conservation plan that would drive our work for the next 30 plus years. People talk about 30% conservation by 2030 or 50% by 2050. So when I say 30 years out, I'm really, I'm aiming at the second date in terms of building a long-term strategy for our work. And that work is I don't want to read this to you, but just pulling a couple of things out here is that we're talking about not just increasing the rate of conservation, which we really would have to meet those goals. That's like depending on how you categorize, you know, the different areas that are protected or no matter how you categorize it, we have to increase the rate. We also want to increase the quality of it. We want to make sure that we're building the kind of agency and partner capacity to store that land over the long term. It's one thing to acquire lands or acquire conservation rights to property, but taking care of that land, making sure invasives don't grow up, making sure they're not encroachments, making sure that trail infrastructure or other infrastructure is protected. That's a really complicated and expensive proposition. And the more we protect, the more of that work there is to do. The agencies desperately need staff to be able to do that work as do the conservation partners. So part of the work would be not just to describe how do we get there, but what does it cost and what are the kinds of funding sources besides the Housing Conservation Trust Fund and the federal dollars that we draw down that we would use to meet those goals. The last sort of substantive slide that I'll do, and I'm happy to take as many questions as you have, is just to kind of point to the different strategies or tools that are already in place and that would help us do this work. And this is like a good news slide. Vermont has been working towards these goals, whether they knew it or not, for a long time. Conservation design is named in the statute, but there are a number of other tools and partner strategies that are out there, including obviously the Climate Action Plan where those goals are pulled out, the 30x30 and the 50x50 are announced in the Vermont Climate Action Plan. A&R has several different planning tools that are important, including the Natural Resources Forest Action Plan, the Wildlife Action Plan, and then the Forest Future Roadmap Initiative that you probably will hear about from Commissioner Pisco if you haven't already. TNC has a great resilience and connected landscapes tool that would help us to inform our work. Trust Republic Land several years ago conducted and published a terrific study on the return on investment that you get from conservation. There's not just the amenity value or the economic development value of drawing visitors to an area through conservation, but the actual long-term avoided costs when you protect wetlands, when you protect river corridors, when you protect farms and soil. There's a lot more to it than just the $88 a day that people estimate a visitor to a state park would spend in the local economy. And then in terms of water quality, we have to talk about, we say we're doing conservation and protecting the landscape, we're protecting watersheds and we're protecting the waters themselves. We have TMDL, total maximum daily loads, pollution budgets for our waterways for almost every watershed in the state. We have basin plans that drive the actions of planning and identify the different stressors that are going to impact waters negatively that are being implemented. And then there's a host of other water quality planning tools that are out there that I knew that you're aware of and I would like to make sure that we incorporate in the effort as we undertake this. So, finish up with another great photo. This is, I think this is one that Heather Thurman at TNC took and shared with us. It's Willoughby Peaks and Westmore. And this is another, sort of start where I finished with a huge landscape level conservation project. This one added almost 3,000 acres to a 12,000 acre block of connected and protected land in that part of the state. Going back to that, this protects shorelands, it protects streams, it protects ponds, it protects wetlands, all of which flow into Lake Meagock. And it's a huge area of habitat connectivity, biodiversity and very rich in wildlife and the different recreational opportunities that come with that. So, I'll leave the phone up because it's nicer looking than I am and you can just look at that and it makes me really happy. There are a couple of things I would leave the committee with. One is that I would ask you if you're interested in learning more about what BHCB is doing and supporting the work we've been doing to consider amending the bill H126 to identify BHCB as a player or as a convener in this. We have been working closely with the Secretary of Natural Resources and could offer language to describe our role so that you can help us hold ourselves accountable for the process that we're doing. I think that the session log goals in the bill are really important and they do provide good direction for an agency like ours which is one step outside state government to play that role and to work with the Secretary and the stakeholders. So, I'll be the first thing. The second thing is if there are places in the bill that are really, where the definitions are really crisp and defined. And then there are places in the bill that say if the Secretary or BHCB and the Secretary, if you agree with that approach, want to propose changes or amendments or new definitions to come back and do that. That kind of flexibility in the bill language is often very helpful, but I'd love to suggest there may be other changes that we can look at to make sure that it's clear that this process is going to drive the planning and make sure that we don't feel frozen in places we get started with the way that the bill is describing our goals. Not to avoid shooting for permanent conservation, not to avoid protecting landscape that has the values across from natural to working lands, to think about how that flexibility in the bill language welcomes that process to kind of the experts who are going to do that to bring back recommendations. And then lastly, the budget is needed. We've been asking our partners to give us the capacity that they have, and using our own capacity to do this, we will be hiring facilitators to help drive this process, especially to do a really thoughtful and inclusive public outreach process that requires funding. Most of this is stuff that we've already budgeted for, but the more we've learned about the costs of doing really good public outreach, where engaging community members means sometimes providing travel stipends, providing food or childcare so that people can come to that. Or if you're asking people to serve on subcommittees, there are times when people need to be compensated for that. And while as we develop a budget for that, we would, that's a place where we surely could use support from the General Assembly to help make sure that this is a, as inclusive an initiative as it can be. So I will stop there and see if you have any questions. Okay, great. Let's make sure that I don't forget them. So I appreciated your comments on the goals and tightening the language to make sure we're not freezing in time while we're creating the plan. I think that's what I heard you say, which I was a little concerned with to looking at it. You know, if we don't have specific goals, if that's we're creating in the plan, some, I wouldn't want the agency to feel like, oh, we better just stop here or prioritize this here. Am I hearing you correctly? Do you understand what I'm saying? Am I hearing you correctly? So I'm a little worried. It sounds like you heard me correctly, but I'm not sure what the question is. There's no question. So am I hearing you correctly? Yeah, what I was suggesting is that if you're open to seeing suggestions in language, there's some suggestions around VHCB's role that we could play. There's a place in the bill that says the Secretary in working on this shall bring, you know, propose amendments or changes to the three categories that are there. And that's, I think that's a really important language in the bill. I would like to look at that like more closely and think about is there ways to make sure that as we're developing this plan and doing this catalog that if we want to suggest changes to those categories or that we want to suggest changes to the way that we're approaching these goals, that that would be welcome. Not necessarily, I think it's really important to have clear goals and statute that people understand that helps to drive the process. But to make sure that the process itself can bring back recommendations and there's some flexibility about how we define, you know, what are working lands versus natural lands or what are the, what's the value of different conservation strategies or tools that we may use? What are the alternatives to conservation easements or FIAC positions? I know those are things that the partnerships, you know, the different partners that we worked with, testified to last year. And I just, I'm asking the community if you would be interested in seeing places where we can say this is, this is how as we do that based on catalog, we may recommend some changes or we may recommend a plan that's, that has more farmland conservation or more biodiversity based conservation on farms than what we had initially categorized. Okay. I was not hearing you correctly. Okay. And that is helpful. So thank you. In terms where, where in the bill would we add the HCB? There's the session law at the end of the bill that tasks the Secretary of AMR with working with stakeholders to develop a plan. In the plan, so. Yeah. And I think that could be easily amended to say, you know, the HCB in consultation with the Secretary or vice versa, shall work with stakeholders and develop a plan. Okay. I'm going to show you the language that we're using to describe this, but that's helpful for to polish that section and make sure that the things are as aligned as possible. We have not yet published our RFP to pull facilitators in. So, you know, there is time to adjust on our end that we want to be flexible. We see this as a collaborative process with the General Assembly. Okay. I would be interested in that. And then my last question is, I'm a little confused, I think. So I'm not sure what that, so I think it was the strategic. What is, what is it called? The strategic initiative. So just help me understand that work in the frame of this bill. Where does it, so we have a, we're going to create a plan. So we're putting in law goals and we're saying, thou shalt go create a plan to implement those goals. You'd like us to add you working with A&R. Where does this fit into that? This is that. This is that. I, I posit to you that this could be that. Okay. And that's, we have been, we've been working since last summer to define goals and define a process that we thought was would be where you, one, if the bill had passed and we had been working with the agency or vice versa last time, last summer, what will we have done? I think we would have defined a process and a set of goals and stakeholders and expectations. So we're a little bit ahead of where, where we, you know, were last year at this time because we've had the chance to think about this offline. We also are hold, you know, somewhat holding and watching, you know, the committee and the general assembly is going to do this year to make sure that what we're doing isn't somehow at odds with what the legislature would like to see happen with this plan. Okay. Last question. Yeah. Yes. You said budget. Do you have an estimation on that? No, I don't today, but I thought, you know, while you're working on the bill, I could come back to you with a better estimate of what robust public process and outreach would take. I don't think it's, you know, not hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's, you know, a budget to make sure that we're conducting meetings that everybody can attend. And so I think that's in the nature of, you know, probably $8,200,000 to conduct events to make sure that there's child care compensation for people who participate. So what is the timeline for us like money appropriation? You know, we need to, yes. So we just look into that further and think that through. That might work. I hear you on the money, but also have some practicalities to address. I guess I just would want to. So number one under the plan shall include a review of the three conservation categories defined in section 2801 of this title and suggestions for modifications or additions to these categories. That feels like what you're saying is already in there to me. Yes. I mean, that's the language I was alluding to. I think it's really good. You're not asking for a change there. You're saying. No. But I wanted to review if you like what we're describing in terms of a process and an approach to this work. I wanted to go back through this and say, are there any other places where we would scaffold around that language and make sure that it's clear that that's going to be part of the initial. Those three categories looking at the body of the catalog of conservation that we develop and saying does that do we anticipate that we need more flexibility in there? The answer may be no. The answer may be that we would suggest a few other tweaks and the definitions in the bill to contemplate that that work is going to be brought in. We are going to come back and say, these are the things that we found when we went and looked at this. This being of this kind of acre, this being of this kind of acre, and in order to increase that, we need to do X, Y, Z strategies going forward. I would like to make sure that the folks are doing that analysis feel like they have as much flexibility, that they have as much sort of deference to their expertise as possible. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the science staff at A&R and AFM and the land trusts who are going to be doing that really important phase one work to establish that baseline. I think that's why I want to draw a circle around that language. I think that's really helpful. And if it's clear that the expectation is that that's kind of step one, then that gives me a lot of comfort as a manager helping to supervise this work. I think it is step one. Definitely in there is step one. Yeah, I think it was enumerated this whole time. It's number one. Representative Stebbins and then Morris, but I also want to be very careful about the time. We have another witness and probably need to stand up for five minutes. It sounds like BHCB is the lead in this initiative that you've been working on over the summer and the fall. Right now, I think the bill is drafted as sort of A&R as the lead. And if you don't feel like you can answer this question in a way that feels comfortable, that's fine. But I'm just wondering if there would be any issues if it was A&R or if you think it would be more helpful to have BHCB maintainably. Because even in terms of some of your language that you said, you know, for language changes, you said it could be BHCB does along with partnership with A&R. So I'm just trying to get a better sense there. I would recommend naming BHCB as the primary convener because that's the role that we often play both with the land trust community and with the agencies. That not all conservation happens, obviously, happens through BHCB. But where we're positioned as an instrumentality in the state is in that space between the inline agencies and the land trust community. It's doing a lot of this work as well as the communities, regional planners and other folks who are supporting it. So it strikes me as being very logical to say that. It also strikes me as being logical to name A&R, you know, the BHCB in consultation with the secretary, Shao. Because, you know, you'll hear more from them. I think they're on the witness list for next week about the variety of different land protection strategies and tools that they use. So they're obviously a critical player. But they have it in conversation with the secretary over the summer. You know, they were excited that BHCB was willing to step forward and that we have the capacity to do this. And that we have the trust of people around the table to come together and move it forward. Including secretary Moore and her team. And they've been engaged in your process. Absolutely. Sure. They have, by far, the most number of staff people participating in the central office and the Department of Regional Wildlife and Forest Parks and Recreation. And, you know, that's where, I was deputy secretary of A&R for a number of years in the Shumlin administration. The science staff at A&R are superb and really important to this effort. They have most of the, they have a lot of the data that we need and what they don't have the land trust to. And A&R will be here on Tuesday afternoon. Representative Morris. No, thank you Madam. Just a quick question. So, if I'm reading this correctly now, on page 8, the BHCB is involved with the secretary soliciting an input. And the same with the RPC. So I think we maybe have that covered on that section of it. I'm also wondering on your conserved land that BHCB owns. Is that open to outdoor recreation? Is the forest managed at all? Use value appraisal? Or is it ecologically reserved? Yes, everything you said except the word owned. Because often the way that these deals work is that a, what we're purchasing and often almost always co-holding the land trust are the conservation rights to a parcel. So it's not, it's not generally a fee acquisition although we work with the state sometimes. Like that Bird Mountain and the, the project in up in Willow Bay State Forest at the end. Those were, ended up being, you know, acquisitions of fee land at the state is the fee owner of. But there's still always a conservation easement that we would co-hold with TNC or with the Vermont Land Trust or Upper Valley Land Trust. There are a number of different Stow Land Trusts that we work with. Thank you for my mistake. I heard Perfiers. No, it's okay. Yeah, Perfiers. But yes, recreation, yes forest management, yes farm, you know, farm production, yes water access, yes. I think, you know, production of timber and other forest resources. Thank you. It's great. Thank you so much for your testimony and for getting started on this work. Yeah, and we, like I said, we were really enthusiastic about this last year and didn't want to let time pass because the clock is ticking towards those goals. So thanks very much for having me in today. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a five minute break and we have a little more witness before we break the day. So we'll come back at 2.30. We're going to reconvene our meeting and welcome back Jamie Fidel from the Vermont Natural Resources Council. Thank you. Thanks for having me in today. Appreciate the opportunity to testify on age 126. I'm Jamie Fidel. I'm General Counsel and Forest and Wildlife Program Director at Vermont Natural Resources Council. Also here, offering testimony on behalf of the Forest Partnership, which is a coalition of conservation organizations, including Audubon, Vermont Land Trust, the Vermont Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, and Laura Notes is here with me, the Trust for Public Land and Vermont Conservation Voters. And obviously, every organization that's part of the coalition is interested in the bell and can offer input on their own. But we operate as a partnership to try and bring some efficient CBU so that you can have the perspective, consolidate the perspective. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of background and support of age 126 and then just some general comments. And I thought this morning was excellent like overview from the scientific perspective. Ryan Rubizzo and Louis Thompson really gave some great scientific underpinning of both the need for the bell and some of the scientific thinking behind it. So I'm really not going to spend a whole lot of time on that other than to just maybe at a high level, just kind of focus on so many important functions that our intact lands provide and forest land in particular and our intact waters. But healthy and connected forests, you know, critical for climate protection, forest sequester in the store, carbon leading, carbon sink in Vermont, disaster mitigation, forest service, headwater storage to reduce downstream flooding. In our communities, clean water protection, forests provide critical ecosystem functions and clean drinking water, habitat protection, forests provide diverse habitat for wildlife and plant species that are currently under duress from climate related impacts and you've heard about that this morning. And our overall health and well being forests maintain our physical health and mental well being. Healthy forests are also an economic engine in Vermont. Forest based manufacturing, outdoor recreation and tourism employ approximately 13,000 volunteers and contribute about 1.5 billion in revenue every year. So that's just on the economic side, factor on the ecological side. As I believe Charlie Hancock told you this morning, you get sort of a nine to one return just on conserving land with the ecosystem services that come with it. So there's a huge economic opportunity just as we look at our forests and the role that they play. So while Vermont is heavily forested state with three quarters of our state is covered by forest, it's roughly 74% according to, we look at the forest services information, forest inventory analysis. They say we're roughly at about 74% in the state. You may see some different statistics and there's different models or approaches to looking at it. But while three quarters of the state is heavily forested, it's not the whole story. As I testified here previously, recently, closer look reveals that our forests are being converted and fragmented by rural sprawl. We've been calculating that at PNRC and we have statistics on that. And our forests are an act of decline with an estimated 12,469 acres being converted on an annual basis to develop. That's based on the forest services data that I just referenced. So at this rate, over 300,000 acres of forest land will be lost by 2050. So forest loss poses a significant threat to our climate resilience, the maintenance of functioning natural ecosystems and working in recreational lands. Furthermore, that loss threatens our ability to maintain a resilient landscape that supports wildlife and biodiversity, especially in a climate changing climate. So according to the 2021 Vermont climate assessment, which was done, 92 bird species in Vermont including the hermit thrush in the common loon are expected to disappear from Vermont within the next 25 years. So this is sad and this is what we're facing. And then if you compound in, as you were having some discussion this morning, the fact there's climate change, but then there's a whole host of other sort of challenges playing out on the landscape, sort of the pattern of how we develop. And that is going to continue to compound the challenges for maintaining biodiversity. As I've already mentioned, forest loss is also, well, it is resulting in decreased carbon sequestration in storage in our forests and increased carbon emissions. This has been documented in a number of studies, state studies, 2017 forest carbon inventory, documented that the total annual carbon uptake was less than in 2015 and then in previous decades in part due to decreasing acres of forest land. More recent carbon inventory confirmed that land use change has resulted in net emissions in Vermont, which is concerning because forest land that is converted not only emits stored carbon, but it also reduces future forest carbon sequestration. And then analysis recently conducted for the Vermont Climate Action Council indicates that forests provide the largest source of carbon sequestration in storage in the state, and we've seen a steady decline in sequestration. If that trend continues, the state will find it challenging to meet the Global Warming Solution Act's net zero target by 2050, even if our emission reduction targets are achieved. So because of all these benefits that forest provide, accelerating forest land, accelerating forest land conservation and keeping Vermont's forests as forests is one of the most important policies and it's one of the most important climate policies that we could implement in Vermont. In addition, planning to maintain a resilient and connected landscape with large forest blocks and connected habitat is an established priority, an already existing established priority for land managers, state and federal agencies, legislators, many non-governmental and forestry entities. So as recognized in the findings of the Global Warming Solutions Act, according to the Vermont Agency Natural Resources, the conservation and restoration of Vermont's forests, flood plains and wetlands, and the promotion of forest management, farming practices as sequester and store carbon are critical to achieving climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience and support a host of co-benefits, such as improving air and water quality, economic vitality, ecosystem functions, local food systems, creating more climate resilient communities and landscapes. There's been a lot of attention to reducing the rate of forest land conversion and loss in Vermont. This goes back to even 2007 when Governor Douglas's commission on climate change had 38 recommendations and at the very top, from a cost-benefit perspective, was keeping forests as forests or reducing the rate of forest land conversion. And that plan back in 2007 explained that central to curbing the state's greenhouse gas emissions is the conservation of Vermont's significant existing green bank, our working landscape, our abundant forests, our maintenance of open land. Indeed, Vermont's most precious and effective mechanism for countering climate changes are forested landscape, which represents nearly 80% of the state's land area and provides us with a rich array of services such as clean water, stable and fertile soils, and a vibrant recreation and tourism industry that benefits both the culture and economy of our state. And since 2007, we've not reduced the rate of forest land conversion. We've gone from 80% of forest in Vermont to 74%. So with this in mind, a recently developed initial climate action plan underscores the need for accelerated land conservation and hosts the strategies to try and reduce the rate at which we're losing our forests. And for example, as I believe you've already heard, the climate action plan specifically endorsed the strategy of investing in strategic conservation in order to increase the pace of permanent conservation towards 30 by 30 targets described in a federal report conserving and restoring America beautiful with Vermont Conservation Design Acting as a guiding plan for prioritization of efforts. So with all of this as background, I'd like to say that we support this bill. We support it at last year. We continue to support this as a really important bill. We support it to develop a plan to advance the climate action plan's goal of increasing the pace of land conservation in addition to broad planning to maintain a resilient landscape in Vermont. We agree that the value of our forests lie in their broad uses, supporting biodiversity, community and climate resilience, as well as our outdoor recreation economy and our forest lands enterprises. All of these uses are supported in the bill. And this bill will help maintain the durability of the lands that contribute to our rural economy and our tourism and recreation economy in addition to providing invaluable underpinning for our ecological well-being and all the species that are here in the state. I think it's really important to see this bill for what it is. It's a planning process. It defines some goals for the state, for accelerated land conservation and it initiates a planning process. It's a plan based on stakeholder input. And we think that the plan in order to work is going to have to focus on working with willing landowners. That's how conservation works in Vermont. It takes a willing landowner, a landowner who's interested in conserving their land to then affect that conservation, whether it's a group like the Trust for Public Land or any of the land organizations that work with creating more public land or the agencies, the state agencies or federal agencies that are adding land to their land base or the easements that are affected with landowners, it's all done with willing landowners. And so I know it can... I've heard a bit, maybe there could be some confusion. This is bill creating some kind of statewide mandate that we're going to conserve 50% of our land bases. It's going to be an X, Y, or Z parcel and that's going to be mandated on landowners. But conservation doesn't work without a willing landowner. That's their property interest is in conserving their land. And the demand right now for landowners that want to conserve their land and the available funding to do it is far out of whack. And so there's a real pent-up demand for willing landowners who want to help conserve Vermont's character and our rural economy. So having a plan to look at the best ways to try and address that bottled up demand and need is really valuable. Representative Stebbins has a question. Thanks, Madam Chair. Sorry, so we have a lot of landowners wanting to conserve or we don't have enough? We have more landowners that want to conserve than we have available funding to help them do it. Thank you. Representative Smith. Why do we need to fund landowners that want to support conserving their land? You don't need to give them money, do we? No, it can work in a couple of different ways. You know, sometimes there is available funding like through a program like the force legacy program at the federal level that has money available to pay landowners outright in fee for conserving their land. Oftentimes the other mechanism is a landowner will donate a conservation easement and there's certain tax benefits that comes along with that in long-term planning, benefits that go along with that. But there's actually a cost to the landowner through going through that process that actually accomplished easement. There has been some funding over time that's tried to offset some of those costs. Are you referring to current use? No, just a landowner who actually donates their development rights through a conservation easement working with a land trust, for example. Thank you. And then, as I think was mentioned this morning but it's worth highlighting that, and we've looked at a lot of this work ourselves, too, is there's a trust for a public land report that talks about the return on investment when we conserve land that there is, like, this nine-to-one return. There's also been things called cost of community services. Examinations in New Hampshire, they do this a lot because in New Hampshire they don't reimburse municipalities for lost revenue at the municipal level or their current use program. Here in Vermont we do. And the way that they support growth in the current use program in New Hampshire is to do cost of community services reports which show that it's actually more beneficial to communities to conserve land generally because there's less services that go along with that land. And so the conservation that's accomplished, you know, actually is a valuable economic impetus for the state to continue to support their current use program. So when you say they do cost of community services reports, they do them annually? They do them as a state? You know, I know I've been told that this is what they do as I've talked to some tax experts and I've been really wanting to go and find some examples of those to see how they do it. But I think it's come up in certain municipalities where they've kind of forced this question. Well, I remember those studies from way back when we were starting BHCP and we had them here. We've done some, I believe Deb Brighton's done some of this analysis for the Land Trust at times and so it could be valuable to find some of those historical. And it's not to say that it happens in every case, but you know, generally if you have conserved land and you're not, right, there's not roads and services and I don't need to explain to you the services that go along with developing our land. So we support the goals in H-126, advancing permanent conservation of working lands in natural areas by the target dates and creating a framework for maintaining a resilient landscape employing a suite of diverse tools using the ANR's Vermont Conservation Design as a guide. We also recognize that the bill specifically asks for any recommended modifications or additions to the conservation categories in the bill and you know, if we're reading that language right then we believe that will allow for a very robust discussion during the planning process about the best mixed tools. Including those that ensure equitable outcomes to advance land conservation in Vermont and to maintain a resilient landscape for diverse values and uses. Now I'm currently a member, advisory member of the Forest Future Strategic Roadmap Process and I can underscore enough the value of having a long-term and robust planning initiative to look at the importance of our forest economy with a very targeted look at the forest product sector. And this bill is a necessary and very complementary component of planning in the state to determine how best to maintain the actual land base that is so vital to our working lands and forest economy and vital to maintaining biodiversity, myriad ecosystem service functions and the very character and identity of our state. And so like the Forest Future Roadmap this bill would develop a plan with recommendations and the recommendations would then need to be discussed and implemented by the legislature. So I really believe in planning. I've been part of a lot of stakeholder groups and planning initiatives and I know at times we can question another planning process yet. You know for the work that we do, I think I was speaking on behalf of all the forest partnership groups what could be more valuable right now than having a complementary two-step process where we're both planning the future of our forest economy and planning the future of our forest and our land base and how we're going to maintain it. And if we're doing them in disjointed ways versus having this complementary approach at the same time I think we're really missing an important opportunity. Finally we support the vision and the bill to engage with our stakeholder group to build and support to build support and determine how best to achieve land conservation targets and the VCD goals. We appreciate the work that the state agencies and VHCB and TRE and other stakeholders who have been interested in this have done to begin to develop a framework for a conservation planning process and we do support modifying the bill to recognize the role that and the resources that VHCB is offering to assist with the implementation of the bill. And I guess I would just close that, you know here I've spoken on behalf of the NRC and forest partnership but forest partnership groups all individually have a lot to bring to this conversation and of course are all individually available to you to follow up in any capacity. We'll continue to track the bill and remain interested in this progress. Thank you for your testimony. Remind us again who the forest partnership members are. Yep, so it's Audubon Vermont Nature Conservancy chapter of the Vermont Nature Conservancy Trust for Public Land, Vermont Land Trust Vermont Conservation Voters Vermont Natural Resources Council. Thank you. Representative Sebelia. Thank you Jamie for your testimony and a couple of things. I want to make sure that I'm clear on. So the bill actually does three things. We are putting new definitions in statute of certain types of conservation areas which I don't have questions about. I mean it but I think we're doing that. We also are putting in statute. Is it stat or we're putting it in permanent statute or a session a lot that I don't have a good sense of that and you're probably not the right person to ask the goals. And that I'm a little worried is not clear enough. I have questions about myself. And then we are also creating a plan. Would you agree that's what we're doing? I guess we'll look closely at the bill because the definitions that are the categories of land conservation. I think you're suggesting that we're creating these statutory categories and I just want to look at the bill and see if that's the case or if we're creating these categories to inform the planning process in our long term conservation goals. And then to plan to see are these the right categories in the other additions or modifications. And so I'm not sure we're creating actually statutorily required categories versus this helps to inform the overall planning process and our long term goals of what we'd hope would be represented tracking that USGS kind of gap analysis definitions. Okay. The problem I'm trying to solve, I am having a hard time understanding why this bill was vetoed. And what the conflict is here, and you can't answer why the bill was vetoed because you didn't veto it, but what the conflict is. And so, you know, so far as I'm going through this, I mean it just seems like there's some maybe clarification issues or languages issues. So that's why I'm asking you, would you agree that there are three things we're doing here besides the plan? We are putting definitions in statute, we are putting goals in statute for the plan. I think we're putting definitions into a bill to help inform a planning process. Okay. So we're not putting those in statute? I don't know. I mean, maybe this is a better question. It is for less counsel. Okay. Sorry. Okay. And then I, so, you know, I was having a conversation with our last witness, Trey, just about, you know, we referenced 20 by 20 or 30 by 30, excuse me, 30 by 30 and 50 by 50. And so for me, I'm trying to make that make sense as a math equation in my head. Like, how do we get there? Like, okay, that's the goal. How do we get there? But I don't think that that's actually what we're doing. I think we're doing something a little bit different and that's maybe just a strategy to getting there. I think we're trying to, so, I'll be quiet. Can you help me with that? Don't, well no, and I think that can be confusing. It's actually a little bit confusing for me because I'm trying to make the math make sense and I think it's actually something different that we're doing that that's a strategy for. So we're trying to protect those connected places and biodiverse regions and this is a strategy for getting there. So can you throw me a lifeline here? I think so. I mean, I think you've been hearing about Vermont Conservation Design, which is this incredible blueprint to say how are we going to maintain a resilient landscape and maintain our ecological integrity and there's a huge economic integrity underpinning it and the plan too because it includes a lot of working lands. And we've got these huge threats and challenges right now. I mean, the land use trends are not going in a great direction for maintaining that resilient landscape and so I think we're trying to develop a plan to say how can we get at meeting Vermont Conservation Design as a much higher target of like 74%. How can we get to conserve levels by 2030? How can we create a plan to get to 50% by 2050 and how can we roll up our sleeves and figure out strategies to get there? And I think then there's going to be recommendations that will need to ponder and chew on and say how do we fund this work and what's the capacity and how do we work with willing landowners? Do we have all the right strategies in place? I'm not really seeing the conflict and maybe there is none. But I think, I don't know if I said this to you yet, Jamie. It's really important to me to be able to explain what we're doing to my neighbor. And I can't do that. Well, I can, but I can't tell them why they should... I can't in detail actually yet, so I'm trying. If I was explaining this to my neighbor, I would say we're trying to hold on to the best of Vermont. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, members. We need to go to the floor. So thank you for your testimony, Jamie. And we will adjourn for the day. And oh, before... Sorry, I'm doing that. Just to heads up, looking ahead to tomorrow, please, on your agenda, we will have legislative counsel in at 11 o'clock talk about household hazardous waste. We're going to shift gears. I want you to remember all those questions you had after testimony earlier in the week. And then after lunch tomorrow, we're going to continue talking about household hazardous waste. But while we have a legislative counsel in here, I want folks to ask those kind of... They were like logistics questions. How does the EPR work versus a fee? So please get your head back into that before we meet tomorrow. Thanks. Now we're adjourned for the day.