 All right, folks, welcome to the Dodie Elementary School. They've been very accommodating, welcoming us to present this long range management plan for the Worcester Range Management Unit, what we're here to discuss tonight and present to you. We appreciate everybody's attendance here and the interest in the unit. It's a very special unit as we all know and dearly love whether we live near the Worcester Range or not, so we appreciate everybody coming here and I won't show your interest and appreciation for the unit. So I'm just going to give a brief introduction and I'm going to turn it over to our commissioner, Danny Fiskow. And I just want to once again let you know that we appreciate you coming here and we think we have a very solid, long range management plan for the unit. And why we realize it probably won't make everybody 100% happy with what our plans are with proposals. We're hoping it will be satisfactory for folks and we can agree on our consensus that this is a good investment. Why not? Why won't it make everybody 100% happy? Why not? It's for the people. Oh, yeah? Really? What's your job? Twice. For you. So with that, I'm going to welcome everybody once again and I would appreciate people keep the comments down and have this a civil conversation and let people enjoy the presentation and how the night unfolds for the next couple of hours. So with that, I'll give it over to our commissioner, Danny Fiskow. OK, good evening, everybody. I've got to like shorten this a little bit for me. I want to extend to each of you and every one of you a really warm and heartfelt welcome. I know it's not easy to get out in the middle of the night. I personally had to get a shower, wake up and get out after a long day. I hope you find tonight it's not simply about commenting on a long-range management plan. Really, hopefully you see it as a celebration of public lands, Vermont's public lands, and all that they really provide. You're here tonight because I'm assuming you really understand and get it. They support our overall well-being, all the recreational opportunities that they provide, like the park at Elmore, State Park, popular hiking trails at Pinnacle. Is that back? Are you getting feedback on anything? No, OK. And simply the opportunity to just connect with nature and bathe in its beauty. They support biodiversity and conservation for all species. They reflect on cultural and historical conservation, providing that state's heritage that we all really love. They drive economic impact to local communities with recreational opportunities. They offer educational and research opportunities. They help us to understand and educate about our natural lands. They offer community gathering places, opportunities for us to build social bonds. They boost our aesthetics. I know personally when I'm driving around, the natural beauty of our state lands just speaks to me. And they contribute to climate change mitigation by sequestering carbon and storing carbon and protecting more quality. And they promote sustainable management. While Vermont has public lands that offer all these benefits, tonight is a focus special on the Worcester Range Management Unit, a gem nestled right in our home backyard. I personally live in Stowe, so I really love the Worcester Range Management Unit. It is in my backyard. These lands, over 18,000 acres in the town of Worcester, Middlesex, Waterbury, Stowe, Elmore, and Worcester. I've said that these are not just geographical coordinates. They are intubally woven threads in the tapestry of our lives, invoking a profound sense of familiarity and belonging. And for me, a real sense of gratitude. I was at a meeting earlier today with Treasurer Michael Picek. And he was talking about how to maintain and build our resilience in the state. And he used the phrase, and I'm going to share that with you, Vermont's advantage. And he was thinking about our natural, our land use, and how Vermont has this dead settlement of data towns and villages that is surrounded by this natural working landscape. And we are fortunate in Vermont that we have over 360,000 acres of public lands. And that really helps to provide that background, that tapestry of the natural working land. And that really is state lands are part of our Vermont advantage. And I would like to say, and I know that the Worcester range is really part of that Vermont advantage. As we embark tonight on sharing a draft plan with you, we hope to maintain that Vermont advantage in part because of state lands and the Worcester range. I want to take a moment and recognize the staff that are behind the scenes. I've been with the department for over 20 years, so I have a unique advantage to seeing the dedication and the hard work that they provide. We are really fortunate in Vermont that I would say we have a model of how we look at long range management planning and the staff that manage our state lands. We have staff from all three departments within the agency that come together and share their experience and expertise. We have recreation specialists. We have fisheries and wildlife biologists. We have foresters. We have an ecologist. We have a watershed planner that all come together that thoughtfully think about and plan and manage for our state lands, which is really unique and it's not easy to do. Long range management plans goes beyond the development of the plan that's also about the management. And you'll learn today about the complexities that go into developing long range management plans. There's resource inventories. There's goal setting. There's public involvement. There's implementation strategies, actions, and ongoing monitoring evaluations. These are all key components that shape the plans and serve as the founding principle guidance for land management. I want to take a moment to also talk to you and share with you that today is not going to be a one-way conversation. We're going to share information about what has gone into the planning process so far, but we want to hear from you. That's what tonight is really about. Your stories, your experiences, your passion, your values. Tonight, that's the heartbeat of what we're trying to gather. It's a dialogue. I encourage you to share your stories. I encourage you to walk around and talk to staff. You're here, I'm assuming, because you love these lands and have information you want to share. Please also, we want you to provide a public comment. There'll be opportunities up front to do that. Your comments will ensure the diverse perspectives that we will shape the plan going forward. As we look towards the future, envisioning the next two decades, that's what this plan will set forward, your comments, your insights will propel the momentum we aim to build. Together, we are the stewards of the land entrusted with managing these places for the greater good. For tonight and the next week's meetings, the comments that you will provide, staff, we will read all of those and we'll provide a response to this summary. We will try and meet all of that your request and balancing all the needs on the land. We are an agency here with excitement and a shared commitment to fostering a positive future for the Woodster Range Management Unit for generations to come. Your voice matters and together, we'll shape the legacy of these cherished lands. Thank you. We're going to do presentation first in questions at the stations around the ask. You'll have plenty of opportunities as we get through, go through this presentation. I know, so I'm trying to get those slides going. There we go. So my name is Jim Duncan. I am the state lands manager for the Division of Forestry for the Forest Props and Recreation. I'm standing in tonight for Hannah Phillips, our state lands administration program manager who would normally be giving this overview and unfortunately due to illness couldn't be here. And I know I can't convey how sad she is to be missing this exciting moment in the development of this plan. I just want to acknowledge the hard work that she's put into getting us to this point. I'm going to give you an overview of the long range management of the process that went into developing the long range management plan and introduce the folks that you'll be interacting with today. From the basic question, is it a process question? Yes. Why do we need this flight? That is a great question. I encourage you to go around to all the resource stations and talk about the specific pieces that you are proposing. So this is not a time for questions. I'm happy to go through this process so that we have as much time as possible to interact with people. And the bulk of this will be. So if I could just do this quick presentation with our resource experts who can give you a good orientation to all the pieces we put together, you'll have a much better chance of interacting with folks in those individual stations. So I'm going to keep going and there'll be plenty of opportunities for comment. So from the overview process, we'll go through each of the highlights from the assessments and plans and strategy sections and come back and wrap us up about process for the rest of tonight, as well as providing comment when the time comes. I want to start out with acknowledging, as Danny said, that this is a result of an extraordinary number of hours of work from our district stewardship team in the Bay Area District. The people listed here spend countless hours in the field, in meetings, on desktops, in maps, coming up with this plan that we're discussing today. Many of them are here today to help answer questions that you have about details in the plan so that you can provide informed comments on the plan as part of our process. I'm going to walk through these folks and just ask as I go through, I'm not going to wait for each one, but just stand up as I call you so people know who's here and who they might want to address certain comments to. So we have Brad Green, our student district stewardship forester, Jack O'Rill, our state lands forester, Dan Singleton, state lands forester, Walter Basinski, our forest recreation specialist, Nick Caputo, parks regional manager, Andrew Hirsch, our forestry specialist. We also, from the Fish and Wildlife Department, have Daniel Sarski, our state lands ecologist, Nile Dodge, our wildlife biologist, Josh Bowen, our wildlife specialist, Dave Adams, habitat specialist, Brad Ladego, fisheries biologist, and Keith Ritchie, basin planner. We're also really fortunate to have a number of other supporting staff. You've probably seen some of them around the room. You have the folks listed here, John Austin, director of wildlife, myself, Steve Gomez, our policy and special projects manager, Jerry Nunnery from the Orleans County Forester, Gannon Osborn, land acquisition program manager, Oliver Pearson, director of forests, Fairfoulfist recreation program manager, Niels Reinhardt, our historic preservation specialist, Chloe Sardones, our forest health specialist and obviously our natural community psychologist. So a great wealth of expertise and information in this room tonight to support you and understand what's in the plan and answer some of your questions. As far as process and where we've gotten to today, these are the really broad steps that we're going through in developing this plan. The first is resource assessments that take a look at the natural recreational and cultural resources of the parcels that make up this unit. We do this so that we can understand the baseline conditions of each of the places on the Worcester Range Management Unit. We then did a public input process in early 2020 that saw input on what matters to members of the public in the management of this unit. So we consider this the assessment public interest and completed in summer of 2020. Drawing both the assessments and the public scoping we produced a draft management plan at the district stewardship team and that's what we're discussing here tonight. After this common period closes, the district stewardship team will develop a revised management plan. So that's the order that we're in for this fourth step shown here in this important moment in talking about the management of this plan. Our goal tonight is to orient you to the plan and what is in it so you can provide comments on that plan. We can't cover everything, it's a long document. So we'll hit some highlights in each of our sections and then invite you to use the time that we set aside at the end to actually go to each of the stations that you'll see around the room and ask more questions about specific places, specific actions that you have an interest in and that will help you inform your comments on the plan and make it so that we can be as responsive as possible to what you wanna see in this plan. The rough agenda, we're a little bit late already but we're hoping to spend about 45 minutes doing this presentation of the plan, of orientation if you will. We'll then have at least an hour for open house questions and discussion where you can meet with resource specialists around the room. This common period is open, will remain open until February 2nd and we'll have an identical meeting to this on December 19th. Nothing new will be presented, same process, second chance for members of the public to be at this meeting if they can't be here. So that's the agenda, as I said, the questions and discussion are gonna happen in the resource assessment sections and at this point I'd like to invite Rad Kreenow back up to give us an overview of what constitutes Worcester Range Management Unit in terms of parcels. So Rad. Thank you, Jim. I'm gonna give an overview of the land base of the Worcester Range Management Unit, the total acreage of the unit is 18,772 acres and is part of the Northern Green Mountain biophysical region. Prominent features of the unit are Hunger Mountain, Elmore State Park, the Perry Hill trails over Waterbury, Stowe Pinnacle along with Pinnacle Meadows, Middlesex Notch WMA and the recent acquisition of the Brownsville Forest and Spell. The landscape context, the adjacent conserved lands of the Worcester Range Management Unit include the former Atlas lands, Waterbury Waterworks parcel, the Worcester Town Forest as well as the Middlesex Town Forest. Entirely within the 45,000 to 245,000 acre highest priority blocks of the intact forest and habitat connectivity are found within this unit and the critical North, South and East West travel linkages for wildlife are also in this unit. In a recreational context, we have other very prominent features in highly used areas within the unit including Elmore State Park, which also has a fire tower at Elmore State Park. So vast trails, mountain bike network primarily at Perry Hill. We've got mossland falls and also the sky link rail which runs the length of the Worcester Range. And now I get to pop back up and talk about public scoping. So as I mentioned, this is a key step out of the assessments where it's completed. A survey was distributed. We had about 700 responses from 96% for monsters across 96 towns. This was distributed online, asked a number of questions of respondents. These graphs summarize some of the key points but there's a pretty detailed appendix summarizing the public input and there's detailed information available on request. The survey asked about the things that people do on the Worcester Range management unit. Top three were hiking, backcountry skiing and dog walking amongst respondents. It also asked which management objectives are most important to, are most valued by each of the respondents. So on that graph on the right, you probably can't read the text but it goes from lowest value to the highest value in the bottom. The highest value for respondents was the resource protection on the unit. The lowest value was economic benefits provided by the unit. The other two results we wanted to highlight from the public scoping were about the amount of each opportunity that Polk Spell was being provided and wasn't too much or too little. In terms of not enough opportunity on the unit was for mechanized or mountain bike recreation, quiet forest blocks or natural areas and universally accessible trails. On the flip side for what there might be too much of, too many of, people felt there was too many motorized recreation trails, too much hunting access and too many timber management areas. So those are the summaries that very high level is a lot more detail that we can dig into and as I mentioned, the appendices in the plan have great summaries and there's detailed comments and information if you want. So at this point I'm gonna turn it over to our first presenter to go through each research resource section and they'll let you do some next person after them and over their assessment and management highlights. Without it I'd like to hand it off to state lands ecologist Daniel Rzarski. Hopefully he'll stop by my station after the presentation is over and we can chat. As Brad described earlier, the Worcester Range Management Unit is a critical part of an international network of connected forest habitats in the northeastern US and adjacent Canada. The Worcester Range Mountains and their flanks are a critical part of a species corridor connecting the main spine of the northern green mountains to the large forest blocks of Vermont's northeastern islands. Strengthen through the Worcester Woods easement and then also the conservation of the Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve. So the map you can see up in the screen to your right, the Worcester Management Unit is outlined in black and all those arrows show where species can move and when we think about movement, we don't just think about where large animals might be moving back and forth but also where plant species can move and how things can move to adapt to climate change as well. So intense. The unit also provides connections west to Bolton Mountain and Mount Mansfield and then south across Route 2 and Interstate 89. Maybe some of you have heard the news recently that E-Trans was awarded a big grant to increase the connectivity of one of the culverts under the road in that area. Additionally, the unit has been identified by the Staying Connected Initiative as a priority critical linkage in Vermont and it is a high resilience, high flow and recognized biodiversity area by the Nature Conservancy Resilient Land Mapping Tool and that's really important when it comes to climate change adaptation. The unit is of exceptional ecological importance because it supports a notable diversity of species and natural communities at a local, regional and statewide scale and because we can't carry out exhaustive inventories of all species nor would it be practical to manage for each individual species, we use natural communities. A natural community is an assemblage of biological organisms, their physical environments, we're talking about geology, climate, natural disturbance regime and the interactions between them. Natural communities serve as a surrogate for the biological organisms of which they are composed. We believe that if examples of all Vermont's natural communities are conserved at a scale in which they naturally occur, most of the species they contain from the largest trees and mammals to the smallest insects, these will also be conserved. We call this using a course filter for management. For those species that are known to require very specific conditions for growth, reproduction or wintering as examples, we use a fine filter for more focused surveys. There are 27 natural community types in the unit, 17 of which are considered state significant, so of highest quality. These range from low elevation at 306 feet in elevation to high elevation communities up to 3,600 foot feet. This includes over 17,000 acres of upland and 313 acres of wetland and there are at least eight rare and seven uncommon plant species and there are likely more. The community types, as you can see pictured here, are quite lovely to look at and these are all that are there. There's so many more. They include basin swamps, emergent marshes, vernal pools, seeps, mountain forests, acidic cliffs and outcrops, talus woodlands and extensive hardwood and softwood forests. So a primary strategy for the Worcester Range Management Unit is to preserve ecological functions on state lands for both the landscape and project scale perspective. So this large perspective and then small on the ground perspective. So while the Long Range Management Unit provides us, or the Long Range Management Plan provides us with landscape scale actions, the project review scale allows for a more nuanced opportunity for identifying actions to protect biodiversity and ecological function on the ground. So this is where the rubber hits the road. As the state lands ecologist, I do this by providing annual and ongoing review of state lands projects to ensure continuity and quality of ecological functions and values and I make sure that these things are also aligned with the Long Range Management Plan which is why it's so important to have these plans to help guide that. Especially with your voices included. So an example of how this plays out includes ecological review of timber harvest. So I might ensure that we have adequate buffers to allow for successful movement of amphibians for breeding and movement. And to provide recommendations for increasing forest structure complexity and species composition through snag and fallen log retention, soil conservation practices and avoidance and protection of sensitive, unique features as they're identified. So a second example is a review of trail proposals to avoid impacts to rare and threatened plant species and then also those special features in natural communities. And I may do this by suggesting protective management actions like proposing changes to the trail location to avoid trampling of rare plants or disturbance to wildlife feeding areas. And of course I'm doing this all in conjunction with our wildlife biologist and fisheries biologists as well. So I look forward to talking with you afterwards. You'll find myself and Bob Zano, the previous state land ecologist at the station and next year we'll hear from Noel Dodge who is a wildlife biologist with Fish and Wildlife and Noel will discuss the Wildlife Habitat Highlights. Let me give some quick, I have a slide up here which is very small for all of you unfortunately. I apologize for that. As you can imagine, Danielle just described that over the management unit of 18,000 plus acres of habitat there's a large variety of wildlife habitat represented. Without reading through all these highlights on the slide, it's clear that the diversity of habitats has improved our numbers and variety of wildlife species. So there's some highlights up here that you may not really be able to read well but there's a number of represented species and habitat types across this large. This is only a snapshot and there are certainly other species and habitat resources not listed here. For example, the 29 map remote pools that Danielle mentioned and it's on various documents as well as this management keep document are only those for which we have data and are aware of. So there certainly could be more out there and we welcome reports of remote pools and potential remote pools within the management unit. I'll be over in the corner over there with the wildlife maps so you'll be able to bring those information and resources to me. There are most certainly additional pools as I said, all over the acreage. Some, the same goes for other habitats as well such as hard and soft mass feeding areas, primarily American Beach, Black Cherry and Mountain Ash which provide food for a number of different wildlife species from birds to large mammals. Bird species in particular are well represented with 12 popular e-bird hotspots within the management unit including Elmore State Park recording 112 species of birds out of the total of 164 species reported on like Elmore as a whole. So good representation in Elmore State Park probably has to do with a number of people to visit and look at birds while they're there, which is great. If you're unsure what e-bird is which is entirely possible for many of you it's, I'll be happy to describe to you at the station later on but it's essentially citizen science reporting of wildlife which is always appreciated. This second slide gets into a little bit more of what our plans and actions are which are outlined in the document itself. Much of this management unit has no active habitat management and functions in more or less of a natural state. The cooperation with FDR staff working on active civil cultural treatments we incorporate avoidance of important wildlife habitat as Danielle described earlier. And we work to create and promote other less represented habitat conditions through active management. Much of the active work is directed at promoting and enhancing wildlife food resources by releasing or pruning existing trees that produce wildlife food and create more vegetation structure to increase areas of wildlife refugia and access for forage for a wide variety of wildlife species. And the last bullet up here mentions recreation which there is a fair amount of in this management unit. This management unit has a large diversity of recreational opportunities with varying levels of intensity of use. The wide diversity and broad landscape footprint can and does overlap with wildlife habitat in several locations. We have been and will continue to work with our FDR colleagues to continue to evaluate recreational wildlife overlaps in a variety of locations, including Perry Hill, as mentioned earlier, where an extensive trail network and increased winter mountain biking use occurs within a deer wintering area. A project that our next leader, forest recreation specialist with FDR, Walter Okazinski will describe in further detail. Walter. Thanks, Noel. Set me up really well with the last bullet. And I definitely want to thank the familiar faces I see in the audience, and it's really good seeing folks that I know have left sweat up in the hills working on the trails. I see people here that have helped provide access to the community. Definitely makes me a little less nervous talking to an audience with some familiar faces. But the recreation piece, we really went deep into data to describe what's going on out there. This is a special place. We all know that, that's why we're here tonight. A lot of other people know it, too. And we do have the means to provide that interaction with this land base. And I know people really appreciate that. We see it by the use. I know it's very tiny, these lines up here. You can see it better in the draft LRMP, but basically what you're seeing there is what we've been able to capture for use. All the trails that are in the management unit, whether it was the gateway to a network or a specific trail, we were able to capture usage data, whether it's out there doing survey work, use of sensors, which I've got some sensors at the table, the recreation nook over there in the corners, place where you can see that up in person. But really what we see in this range is just a wide variety of use, but we have places that get heavily used, east and the west side of the range, night and day, when you think about use. Max use that we've seen out there, 6,000 people in July at Elmore. But the range is there. There are places where you can still go out and you're not gonna see anybody all day, and then there's places where they have a lot of use, like Moss Glen Falls, Elmore, Stope Innacle, Perry Hill. So that diversity in use is really good to see. The other thing I like to highlight, with that use and that intense pressure comes impacts. And we're trying to shine a light on the situation through assessing the infrastructure. So the pie chart on top, this is a typical street light. Green is the go, good, red stop. What the top one represents green in this one is infrastructure that we have in place that's in good shape. We probably don't have to touch for about 10 years. Probably about 65% of our infrastructure out there, that we evaluated in 674 sites is good. Leaves a lot of work. The one below is places where we need to have infrastructure and red is places where we need to have it sooner than later. So it just shows that with that use comes the need to manage and we have work to do. Infrastructure like punch-in, bridging, stone steps, stepping stones. Basically, we've got 43 miles in this management unit. And if we were taking all the infrastructure, we counted and laid it out evenly every 200 feet, there would be something there that's helping redirect water or harming a surface. The diversity is amazing. Like I said, 43 miles, Brad's already mentioned this, Perry Hill is a regionally renowned resource that draws people from all over to that location. And certainly the town of Waterbury benefits and it increases people's, the health benefits there too. It's just pretty amazing when you look at what is in this management unit, the diversity. We've got a waterfall over at Moss Glen, 100 foot tall waterfall, one of the most beautiful locations in the state. It's in this management unit. Brownsville Forest, we just got that into the network. Beautiful, beautiful location. And then the diversity of use, as you can see here, the mechanized multiuse, 10 miles, motorized six, pedestrian 27th. There's just good diversity. When we look at the management actions and the strategies, this is what you'll find in more detail in the draft LRMP. Stop over, I can show you the page number and we're gonna read these details. But they all fall into some primary buckets. I think managing is partial. Like Brownsville, that comes into the state lands quiver. And we have to think about how has this been used? How should it be used? How are we gonna manage it? Use dispersion. There's a strategy in there for stove pinnacle pinnacle meadows where we add sustainable trail to make a loop so we can disperse all that use that's coming to that location. Sustainability improvements, certainly work that we need to do on the ground. Managing access pressure everywhere. Even to places that don't get a lot of use, we need to do something in those parking areas. Increased stewardship efforts all the way around. We're recruiting right now for volunteer trail maintainers. If you're interested, see me. I've seen a few people in here already that do that. And then the unauthorized uses. That's a big part of what we're looking at now. Is this something we need to manage? We're seeing cutting for backcountry skiing. We wanna talk with the people that are doing that, figure out this is a good place for it. If so, how do we manage it together? So I do look forward to talking to folks more in the little recreation look over there. And with that said, I wanna intro, Jack O'Rill, State Lands Forester, to start talking about the forest. Thanks, Walter. Hi, everybody. My name's Jack O'Rill. I'm gonna be giving a very brief overview of the forest resource highlights. And after this presentation, I really hope to talk to a lot of you back in the forest resource section. So in developing this WRMU forest assessment, we generally use three types of information. We use remote sensing information, GIS, map layers, soil, site classes, satellite imagery, LiDAR. We use stand level inventory data. We reviewed and analyzed stand inventory data, which includes tree species, volumes, densities, cover types, tree regeneration. And we also use district knowledge and records. We take all this information and compile it and summarize the entire oyster range. Very diverse, 16 different forest types, 87 different soil types, 147 separate forest stands. So following this mapping and resource assessment phase, we then analyze stands for the best fit of management approaches. We identify stands best suited for passive or non-commercial vegetation management. These are areas that have sensitive features, high elevations, specific public uses and management considerations or steep slopes. We assess areas and stands that are suitable for active management now or in the future. And within that second group, we pull out from that group and further identify currently suitable stands for commercial vegetation management. And through site visits and further analysis of stand conditions, we identify areas that are appropriate for considering commercial forest management during this LRB management cycle. And now Dan Singleton is going to walk through the management strategies. Good evening. As Jack said, I'll be covering the forest resource management strategies and actions along the climate change adaptation and mitigation slides this evening. The forests of the Worcester Range Management Unit are pretty special, whether you're standing in them or viewing them from afar. Probably drew some of you in here this evening. Really, that forest provides many ecosystem services such as clean water and air, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, climate regulation, et cetera, and provides many benefits to you, the people. To maintain these services and benefits, the agency manages its land to meet the goals and objectives found within the Long Range Management Plan. Some of these management goals and strategies are to maintain and enhance the intact and unfragmented forest, the forest ecosystems, the significant natural communities, wildlife habitats that exist within the forest, and also the development of old forest and structurally complex forest, and to produce traditional and non-timber forest products through sustainable forest management. These goals are often met, as Jack said, through both passive and active management. Passively, we keep our forest forested by not developing them and not selling them off. We also consider new acquisitions when funding and opportunities arise. We also consider reclassifying areas to prioritize non-timber management objectives. And then, actively, we are proposing to conduct non-commercial vegetation management in the form of invasive plant control, mast and crop tree release and pruning, open land and young forest management, and ecosystem restoration. We are also proposing to conduct 13 forest management harvest across the unit to occur throughout the, sorry, to occur throughout the duration of the plant, primarily using uneven age management techniques. Right, so uneven age management is a technique that land managers will use to mimic sort of more naturally disturbed forests where there's all age classes are managed across the landscape. Typically, the forest canopy stays intact. It never comes off as opposed to uneven age management where eventually that forest crop is harvested at once. The Worcester Range Management Unit is not excluded from the effects of climate change. We expect that these changes may impact the forest as both temperature and precipitation levels increase. These changes generally alter the site conditions and the growing conditions and more or less create longer growing seasons, making them more favorable to invasive plants, pests and pathogens, and other offsite tree species cause stress to seedlings and sapling regeneration, increase risk associated with drought and fire, impact operability for management equipment, and increase the risk to forest road infrastructure, road surfaces, bridges, culverts, that sort of thing. To lessen these impacts, mitigation strategies are embedded within the Long Range Management Plan and aim to maintain and enhance forest ecosystems, protect soil productivity and management infrastructure by maintaining healthy and productive forest, improving the forest age structure and age class diversity, retaining woody debris in active management areas, matching management equipment to the site, and improving that road infrastructure so it's more resilient to those storms and managing against those non-native plants, pests and pathogens so that our forest will stay healthy. I'm sure you'll have questions about all of this and you can find me in the break, excuse me, straight back at the breakout sessions. And up next is Chloe Sardonas, our resource protection forester. Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming. So we have a number of different ways that we monitor forest health on the management unit. In 2020, we established monitoring and sampling plots to determine the cause of red pine decline. We have 12 plots across the state and one of them is located within the Perry Hill block as pictured above. We continue trapping and survey efforts to find invasive insects not yet present, such as emerald ash borer, which is present in the state, but not yet in the management unit, and hemlock woolly adelgid, present in southern Vermont, but not yet this far north. We also perform aerial surveys of the entire state. We fly four-mile transects and map landscape level damage or forest health issues. These are completed annually. And for any other, more specifics or more information, come find me, I'll be in the back of the room by the forest health maps. And with that, Dave Adams will be talking about water resources and fisheries. All right, as we've heard, this is a really special management block. It's in the headwater streams of both of the Moines and the Manuski River, which is, these are popular areas that feed eventually into Lake Champlain. This includes Moscan Falls. Lake Baltimore are all part of this unit. The groundwater and surface water in this area is incredibly abundant, as mentioned with the amount of vernal pools and small streams that are out there. The wetlands that are also out there provide some wonderful, wonderful habitat. What does this all mean? It means it provides really great cold water fishing opportunities. We've got some really high gradient cold water streams that are showing abundant trap populations of our native brook trout, along with rainbow trout and brown trout as well. Also, outside of these game fish, there's 12 other species of fish that utilize this area that is really, really special. This is awesome because it provides excellent angling opportunities really close to Montpelier, Stowe, Waterbury, and Morrisville for people to get out and really utilize this awesome resource. This cold water resource is in an area that is managed for trees and keeping shaded, helps cool the waters down as they flow eventually in the Lake Champlain with both lamoille and the Wanooscare major tributaries to Lake Champlain. And as we know as the climate warms, the lake warms and these critical waters are essential in keeping that cold. So what are we doing out there to make sure that this stays cool and cold water? Repairing buffers are one of our biggest things that we're doing out there. Large buffers protect the sun from hitting these streams, keeping them cool. It helps protect water quality by filtering out nutrients. We're working to improve stream connectivity by putting in good structures to help fish move throughout the water, as well as other aquatic organisms. We're using the natural stream processes out there letting Mother Nature do what she wants to do. We're also working to improve angler access and promote fishing opportunities out there to get people to this special place and enjoy the opportunities that are out there. If you have any more questions or'd like to talk fish or water resources, I'll be over there. Happy to talk more about this. And with that, I'm gonna send it back to Jack. I believe it. So ANR uses a land management classification system to categorize all of its land. These categories indicate where different levels of use or types of management will be emphasized. Depending on the site's resources, each acre of ANR land is assigned to one of four classifications, highly sensitive management, special management, general management, and intensive management. So sensitive management places with uncommon or outstanding resources where the protection of those resources is the primary management consideration. Special management, these areas have unique or special resources where the protection or enhancement of those resources is an important management consideration. General management, these are areas that can support a variety of uses or management actions. And within these areas, management is focused on sustainable use of resources and minimizing conflicts. Intensive management areas are characterized by high levels of human activity. These include Elmore State Park and Trail Heads. An overview of the classifications of the Worcester Range, about half of the Worcester Range is classified as, how's that? About half of the Worcester Range is classified as highly sensitive management area. About a quarter is special management, a quarter general management, and then a very small fraction is intensive management. So this slide shows a couple of things. The black area is existing natural area, which is made up, that is the current highly sensitive area from the previous plan. For this plan, we looked for more opportunities to prioritize passive and non-commercial management strategies within mid and lower elevation in natural communities. These are places where we intend to prioritize objectives, such as carbon storage and the development of future old growth stance. The blue area shows an expanded highly sensitive area in the current plan. That expanded area has two main areas. One, the Mosklen Watershed area, and the second is the Worcester Range mid-elevation area. The Mosklen expansion area in Stowe, that area feeds the Mosklen Falls natural area, which is the current natural area. It has poor access for timber and wildlife management. And adding this to the highly sensitive management area adds low elevation stands to this classification. The mid-elevation of the Worcester Range, that portion of the expansion, it has areas that are marginally operable. It tends to have thin fragile soils and poor access. So expanding the highly sensitive area to this area adds mid-elevation natural communities to our highly sensitive management area classification. So in the previous plan, highly sensitive area was over 4,000 acres. And in the current plan, it is over 9,000 acres. And with that, I'm gonna hand it back to Jim Duncan to conclude the presentation. Thank you, Jack. There were two more assessments and one other element of the plan. I wanted to highlight is there. We're not gonna go into these in as much detail, but we do have staff in-house to talk with these sections if you're interested. That includes a legal constraints analysis of all of the parcels that are owned in this unit. It includes historical cultural resources assessment for a range of properties and no locations on the unit. And it includes an assessment of scenic resources. So those are representative stations around the room and there are people here who can talk with you about this. So thank you for all of our staff who put together that great overview of a lot of detailed information in a short amount of time, relative to a short amount of time. And now it's time to what comes next. Just a reminder of where we are in the timeline for this planning process. The draft plan was released on the first. The website is shown there if you wanna go visit it in the story map that accompanies it. We're having tonight's public meeting. We're having an identical public meeting on next Tuesday and still. And the comment period is open now until February 2nd. And from February until April, we'll be reviewing public comments, planned updates and next steps that need to be identified. So you're welcome to join our second meeting, but again, that'll be identical information as presented here. And we are looking now to kind of move into being able to provide comments. We think of this as a kickoff to the public comment period and there's no need to submit your comments today. Anything that's submitted between now and February 2nd will be considered equally. If you have any, we're looking at this as a time to orient you to how to provide comment on specific pieces of the plan, answer questions you might have so that we can get the best feedback and the most actionable feedback that we can take. There's several ways you can provide comment. The first is to do so in person at these public meetings. In particular, there are comment cards and forms and people over at that table that can receive comments. So if you have a comment that you wanna have officially considered and responded to, it's gotta happen at that table or in one of the other methods. You're welcome to share comments with folks at these stations, but they won't be able to register them as official comments that has to go through that table over there. You can also submit them as written comments via email to the address shown. You can mail your comments to Brad at the very office. You can contact us by phone if a number is shown and you can use the comment form on our website shown there as well, which allows you to enter written comments. So there are many different ways to comment. You have until February, sorry until February 2nd to do that and now it's time to move into that portion where you can actually interact with each other and answer detailed questions about those. Quick orientation of where we are. We've got, this is a Doty Elementary School. You'll see restroom signs there, back there. We have the resource stations around the room and they're labeled at the top to try and help you find the right people to talk to. If you're interested in talking about the planning process in particular or the land management classifications, I'll be at the station back there and can answer those questions. And so with that, I think it's, I see questions starting to come up. I'm happy to answer questions on process about this circulation, but if you have questions about specific resource assessments or management strategies, the people that answer those are gonna be standing at these stations. So I invite staff to start moving to our stations and give a process question. Well, I really don't understand, there's been a lot of background information. I think it's great, it's very helpful to understand what you are working with. But the only plans that I've heard about were that there needs to be some work done on the infrastructure and the trail system and that there's a change to land classifications and in about 5,000 acres to hide the sensitive. But I didn't really understand what any of the other plans were about active management. And I don't know if each one of these people, each one of these stations, it's gonna tell me, I don't know where to go. Sure, so if you have a question. So if you have a question about active forest management, it's a great example. There's a forest resources station back there. Folks who understand that you have the details, the details are in the plan, but if you have questions about what they are or more, they've presented some of the highlights. If you have questions about those highlights, I would encourage you to go to the forest resources station. Thank you. Is this a process question? Yes. Your presentation on the spring, is that gonna be available online? Yes, it is. And we'll also be posting a recording of this tomorrow. I believe so. Tech Timeline, I would hope so. That we can get up first thing tomorrow but this will be available for recording of this. Your presentation will be available online as well as the slides themselves. So you can both see the recording and the better close up versions of the slides. So with that, I'm gonna ask everyone to stand up. We have about an hour at least. It's a vehicle and make sure to stop by the comment station.