 Good afternoon. I'm here with Michael Snyder. He is the Commissioner of the Vermont Forest Parks and Forest and Parks and Forest Parks and Recreation. And recreation, there you go. All right. I got it. And he's just written this book called Woodwise, Woods Wise, and we're really excited because we like to spend a lot of time in the woods And we thought this would be a fun spring interview to do. So thanks so much for coming Michael. I'm happy to be here Thanks for having me. How did you become Commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation? Well, that's that's an appointed position by the governor. Governor Scott re-appointed me when he came into office and after I had served for three terms under Governor Shumlin, who first appointed me in 2011 and that happened. I came to that position after after having worked in the department as County Forrester right here in Chinin County for about 14 years and then was promoted to commissioner in 2011 been here since. So how How is that transition for you from being a Forrester to being a head administrator? Well, it's a it's a big change. I'd like to think that I'm still a Forrester because I'm super into that and But it has changed in the way. I do it. What I do but it's mostly It's a significant change whereas I was a County Forrester working with private land owners giving technical assistance into towns and communities working with school groups. It was a day-to-day a lot of time outdoors interacting in the woods with people and this is Decidedly lacking in tree time. Yeah, this is more meetings and as you say administering and so, you know, I've had a career that's been in the woods and Forest Science, Forest Management, Forest Policy I think at its best would try to combine Forest Science and Forest Management. And so that's kind of an interesting opportunity I have is to Spend some part of my career trying to do Forest Policy by again integrating Forest Management, the realities of life interacting with the planet and Science, Forest Science and understanding of the planet particularly forested parts. And where did your love for the forest and the outdoors come from? Well, I think it's been there all along I mean sometimes I joke or like I think I must have been born this way It's earliest memories just really liking to be outside I think associations with people who were and worked outside and then a really notable experience Around the time when I realized you have to grow up at some point and have a job I was lucky enough to meet a forester and He was amazing. He had well I had a cool truck and he had the vest with all the gear and measuring devices and he knew so much and Had this easy way in the woods that I just thought you mean you can do that I'm doing that and I set out to do that and took every class that was related went to UVM forestry school And have worked in forest forestry in a variety of different ways ever since so it's just Lucky to have found something that I really love personally and in so many ways that you can actually make a career in a living doing It in a variety of different ways And I would encourage young people to think about that because I don't know that it's really well known It's possible to have a really great life In the woods or related to the woods What are the biggest threats that the Vermont woods face? We're lucky to be so heavily forested in the state about three-quarters of the state is forested and we get a lot of benefit from that But and it's largely in really good shape Fairly healthy. There are health threats to forest health that are natural Ciclic occurring threats forests have evolved with them. That's really those aren't the Really scary threats, but we have some new kinds of threats so invasive plants paths pests and pathogens notably the emerald ash borers a great example more recent Which threatens to kill ash trees it kills ash trees and it's devastating in other states and Ash is a relatively small but significant part of Vermont's forested ecosystem and losing it is a real problem and That's one example of kind of the changing landscape and globalization and a variety of those kind of forest health threats and I think threats to The culture of people living with and working with forests is another big one and a threat of conversion of forest to non forest Those are the big ones Frankly and what is that conversion rate in Vermont where three-quarter forested? But how much are we digging into that forest? Not all that much if you know in gross terms, which is really good news But and and we've had a history of people working with forests going all the way back to first European contact It was largely forested. It's kind of the original native Vermonters of forests and the things that live in forests and Human settlement kind of contained in waterways and relatively small But then people doing subsistence agriculture and then bigger agriculture you know in the peaking in land clearing in the early to mid 1800s and then a couple of waves of regeneration regrowth and cutting since right so We had this long history and In the sort of modern history say in the 1900s to present we've enjoyed an aggrading growing expanding forest and For the first time in a hundred years A few years ago there was a documented change where we're actually losing forest land And I think it's about 70,000 acres was the estimate over a 10-year the last 10-year measurement period And so that's not huge and it's definitely not caused really the sky is falling But I think it says something that for the when you start going the other way after a hundred years of growing and expanding in area and age and size that is It's sort of saying well, I think it's called it's asked us it's suggested We should probably pay attention and many people are and thinking about how do we Continue the benefits we have from a forested landscape ecological cultural economic They're significant and we want to keep that going and so we're trying to have a more intentional approach about planning for human habitation and growth in a way that is that that can work with large continuous contiguous blocks of forests and connected areas and healthy forests and And that's going to take a mix of approaches and I believe strongly that it includes people being connected to the land through working forests Good civil culture and logging and outdoor recreation There's people being part of the forest and kind of holding it all together using wood locally and being proud of it So you wrote this book I think is a way to educate the community about forests right and their value and how to live in them I think so I'd hope to think that's a big part of it I mean, it's probably worth telling the book came about it is a compilation of essays that I wrote over many years Mostly as County Forester as kind of an outreach tool to based on questions. I would get from actual Vermont landowners Northern Woodlands magazine was good enough to give me a place one page in every issue to kind of address these landowner questions under a heading called Woods wise And I did that for I guess 17 years and this is a collection of 63 of those essays That reflect interest from people and answer addressing their questions all along it was about trying to help people connect and putting it together and having it You know more available I think it's still in that same vein where it's real to have it out there and hope people enjoy it as a Gateway to a lot more so if you were to categorize the the categories of questions in this book How do they fall? They're they're heavy to three subject areas Which reflects my personal interest and which is about forest management Silviculture and logging and how do you choose and which ones and why and how do you do it right? There's a lot of questions and answers about those kind of topics and and a whole lot about how to forest work How do trees grow and why do they do this and why do they look like that? Which is I think helps people get to know forests in another way and to realize there's so much that we know through Really fascinating science done in some cases by people right here in Vermont UVM the Proctor Maple Research Center, you know on and on and that We know a lot. It's really good to know a lot It's it helps us do do things and manage and live and coexist better And then there's also all this wonderful mystery and I even say magic that that remains that we can't explain it all And I think that's pretty fun too because I think some you know New people will come along with different perspectives and different experiences and we'll leave some things for them to answer So when you come into the woods, it's springtime. It's beautiful You know that everything's alive and you walk into a woods. How do you what do you look for? How do you read the environment? How do you tell that things are thriving? The natural world is thriving or not? All of it at the risk of turning people off by sort of saying I have to know everything Because you really don't I think it is all about sort of seeing the whole thing and that it's it's it's there's parts And there's pieces and there's processes and you try to see it all and as much as you can and look for clues everywhere You can there's obvious. There's less obvious So for me, that's something that I take maybe most pride in and personally as as professional as being a forester is that I think foresters Have to integrate so much of the net physical features of a place slope steepness soil type On and on and then there's the biotic things all the organisms the plants and the organisms animals microbes insects that all that are there and Understand their patterns and how they interact, you know sort of the physical the Living the once living and then that's still you're still not done. You still have to understand the people and Economy and culture and and so I think that's when you walk in you're trying to read the history of the place You're looking for clues for what's there right now What does it say about where it was and try to make a prediction about where the trajectory of where it might be heading and They listen to the person who are you with who's the landowner saying here's what I think and what I like And you try to match all that up to get them what they like in a way that is Consistent with the I'll call it the ecological capabilities of the place and that's that's the art of the science of forestry is integrating and Looking for clues and then putting them together in a intelligent way that's kind of grounded in practical reality So that a so that a landowner in which most of the forests are owned by either the state or by people Most by family owners. That's a great point to make where seventy five percent forested and probably eighty five percent of that is Family ownership non-government non-public non-industrial Non-commercial it's like family ownership mostly and so they want to do the best they want to make the most economical and environmental Decisions they have a lot of reasons for owning their land. We know that fruit through lots of surveys and listening to people Making money as part of it most folks will tell you it's a bunch of other things first privacy aesthetics connection to wildlife recreation repeated landowner surveys Reflect that they it's about eight or nine ten maybe down the list of reasons for owning that they say I like making some money too That said there's an awful lot of them who in my own experience you walk around I'd say to a landowner Why what can I what am I here? What do you what are you interested? Well? I want to know it's healthy. I want to make sure it's good for the wildlife And at some point during the visit There's a point where they stop and say well how much is this tree worth everybody gets there eventually because it's real and the timber is Viable and there's there's real money and it and it it's really the only thing that does pay everything else costs and so forestry, silviculture logging forest products the marketplace that results Kind of keeps everything else going in the woods trails access paying taxes Being able to hold on to the land making it available for hunting fishing protecting clean water All of those things cost Timber pays so in Burlington we get really exercised when trees for example City Hall Park I don't know if you've been following that when trees are marked cut down or behind our house up in the south end UVM cut down all these trees. So you know, they're not that many of them So we get quite worked up but in the woods I was recently up in Craftsbury or Greensboro in the woods and they are were all these trees that were marked It was very swampy very woodsy a lot of marked trees that looked like they were coming down and the owner said they were softwood trees and So tell sort of tell us about what happens in a situation like that Why would a person want the softwood trees to come down? Any number of reasons I don't know this particular one and But when you say they've been marked I'm assuming that there's like some paint on the tree or something designated for harvest that Likely suggests someone's had a thoughtful approach and plan that choosing which ones that's good it could be a lot of reasons and generally there's kind of Can I just go back and say I really like your point about the trees in your yard and your backyard and in the neighborhood in City Hall That's what we call community forestry and it's connected to the forest We think of it as a continuum from the green places where we live to the green places where we play and and on There's this so they're all part of forestry We have an urban and community forestry program some of the essays in the book are about Street and shade trees and community trees And it's great when people care enough to say why are those coming down and that's again emerald ash borer threatens a lot of these Planted trees which were ash so it's good to have community engagement and people sharing in the responsibility for stewardship of Kind of the urban and community landscape So That seems a little bit more so we're gonna take these trees down Maybe because they're a threat to property or safety because of some they're compromised by an insect infestation And maybe people could that's that's an that's a reason and a justification in the woods You might say wow, how do you think about all this these happen to be certain softwoods? There are many different species of softwood in our state Mostly we have species mixes growing and not so many pure stands of one thing. There's certainly some softwood plantations in this case, I can't say but I would say this to be helpful like Choices is the silvicultural choices of which trees to keep Growing in which trees to remove are generally based on the current condition of trees Generally elevat measuring some sort of risk will this tree be here being as good a tree as it is right now Or better 20 years from now if not I'm gonna think about this one being one of the ones that goes away And when I think about taking this tree away, I'm gonna think if I do what's gonna benefit, okay? We might make something out of it somebody might make some money, and that's good What else is gonna happen? Will these trees around it have more light and be able to expand their crowns and then grow more in diameter and Maybe produce more nuts for the animals or produce better firewood faster That's the idea is making decisions about groups of trees growing together and their competitive relations and their current vigor and Value and a forester assesses all that through the lens of what did the landowners say they care about out here? And what's this place capable of and you make these intelligent choices about? Which trees to take which trees to leave and it really I think to kind of put it to really oversimplify it But again to kind of provide just a helpful framework Generally, we're thinking about am I gonna work with what's here and try to maybe take out diseased or Compromise trees or trees of low vigor that aren't gonna make it anyway and do something with them To better what remains that's called a thinning or stand improvement And the other avenue broadly is I'm not gonna start over and and maybe this it's it's it's nice big mature trees And nothing in the understory and no brushy habitat Say for songbirds to nest in certain kinds and we want to regenerate this piece of our forest That's so as opposed to thinning or tending That's about regeneration and establishing a new cohort of mix of trees seedlings and saplings to come in from underneath Those are two broad kind of categories of what we think about when deciding which trees to put the paint on for removal So one of the essays you have in here are why it's about why birch trees are white some birch trees are white Yeah, why is that it's fun? It's endlessly fascinated think why does that tree look that way the way things look? We tend we're tempted to think there must be a reason and there probably is Often it's it can be just because there isn't a reason for it not to look that way the way selection works In evolution in the case of white birch or paper birch It's so white and so distinct you have to say like in beautiful like why what why does that? Why is that the tree in fairness? There's some other trees that have light bark but nothing like that beautiful white and The best explanation if not a direct answer is that Well, it has a chemical Called betulin and that's related to the name of the Latin name of the of betula for birch That may have all kinds of Physiological roles, but I think the speculation is that if you consider that paper birch is what we call transcontinental in its range it grows sort of circumpolar all around the globe at a certain at high Elevation latitude and so it's a northern species and it lives otherwise in cold places and It's a little counterintuitive, but in a cold place where you whereas you might think well the more light and heat that you can absorb The better not if you spend most of the time in winter where a cloud comes over that Sun and it's really cold instantly this is The best gas explanation is that it's white to reflect light away white is what color our eyes see when all the colors are reflected back In other words, it's not absorbing anything And so the tree doesn't want to absorb heat in the winter because if it does and then freezes it gets at the cells become active under the bark and then was literally with a cloud passing the temperature drops back to below zero or Whatever and they freeze and they don't want to become active until it's safe to become active again come spring so This idea basically it's highly reflective and that's would seem to suit where they tend to grow At these northern latitudes around the planet and oak trees grow roughly the same places as birch trees Is that right? Well, they can and often do you see oak birch in mixtures But not at those sort of that classic northern edge of the range. There's no Oaks if there are any oaks I'd be very surprised and I would guess that they're extremely small little dwarf things and I'm not aware of anything So they they don't they don't really mix at those high latitudes So I guess my question is if there are other trees up there with the birch like maybe pine or There's not much else at those latitudes. Really sure. There are some some softwood trees depending on, you know, we're telling Northern Canada or in Russia or where have you but The numbers of species that live at those extreme Places dwindles, there's we are blessed here with this collision of forest types We have southern types northern types central types We've got lowlands and uplands and wetlands and drylands and So we really have this rich assemblage of species and we forget that on the margins on the edges of the liveable parts of the planet the species that can hack it Are very few and so you're explaining that these birch trees are part of those few species and this is their Adaptation so they can hack it right and it also but they it doesn't hurt them to live when they live here either In fact, it might help them because they're so beloved that maybe people will you know plant them take care of them and treat them Well, so maybe they're white so people think they're cute, right? So why do when do people know when to tap maple trees? That's another little essay you have sure it's an age-old question You know when's when's the best time? Well, the best time to tap is I suppose when you're ready and when right before the big Gushers start or any the sap runs and that's the thing is The timing of sap flow and initiation the timing the extent It's a highly variable whether dependent other to you know soil moisture and other conditions so It's kind of a there was this tradition of kind of town meeting March 1st and But as sugaring opportunities expand and there's been some bigger ones Maybe they don't have they have so many acres to cover and trees to tap They got to get started a little earlier The issue is you don't want to just go tap early Forever the concern was if you put holes in the tree and then there's no sap flow for a while Those holes will kind of dry up or start to close and or become infected with microorganisms and then that comes up the whole thing So you want to time it right you want to be ready to tap and tap just before it starts to as it's starting to flow And you can't really predict that and it does vary From year to year and I guess it seems like the tapping in becomes seems like it comes earlier and earlier There are many here. I would guess that most large-scale sugar makers are tapping in in January or even early January at this point and Being ready. You don't want to miss this great run in right? and and with the evolution of pipeline and tubing and Spouts that and drills that are you know sort of high-end and really precise. I think my sense is That maybe there's less risk of those other things going sideways Taphole closure or drying up or microbes because you've got this closed system and you're ready to go So we didn't haven't talked about global warming specifically But what has been the impact of global warming on this Vermont's forests? I mean the ash borer it might be an example of that but through you know What should we be looking for as stewards of our state? Forests are heavily involved in the whole climate change conversation and really in two ways one Forests are indeed vulnerable to climate change trees can't get up and move They're built to figure out what's going on and to kind of change with changing weather And that's fine as long as the changes are within the normal range of their abilities. You have odd rates of change and You know global weirding The trees may be not So examples being Storms that are coming say frost events in spring when the trees thought it was safe to be growing Changes that they can't keep up with they're vulnerable to that kind of thing They're vulnerable to changes in hydrology. We're seeing those things. So they're vulnerable the other big piece in the climate change Conversation is that forests are also Basically our best hope and solution because they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into trees and tree parts And then we turn it into durable wood products that hold carbon trees are about half carbon by weight So it's a really good deal And they're part of the solution every study or panel or committee that's ever convened to look at ways to mitigate Atmospheric carbon start with keep forest forest healthy forests are the best thing And that's so they're vulnerable to these kind of changes And we have to be adaptive to how we expect forests how to work and interact with forests based on climate change And we're also wise to keep as much forest forest and healthy and intact because it really is our best hope for mitigating Climate change so I want to just remind people woods wise an exploration of forests and forestry This is a wonderful book if you're if you love the forest if you're curious about nature if you're a naturalist if you're a Volunteer forest person human a human you would this is really interesting if you're a student This is just it's great and the way that you've packaged the information in these short essays is really Helpful, and I actually can't wait to read this book as a lover of forest forest I'm a forest bather. There you go. That would be my relationship from the forest. I do forest bathing So before we close, I just want to say you seem to be a very optimistic person and you know the sort of if you really Listen to the news you can become quite Disparing of the future of the natural world But you just seem to have a positive outlook, and I wonder what you would Just say to us in closing about our state and how we can Support it to be as healthy as possible. Well, I appreciate that. I hope so. I think it's important and I Mean to be clear. I mean I'm not Pollyannish about this I'm pretty serious and and can can get it bummed out as bummed out as anyone and frustrated for sure and maybe impatient but I feel it's more productive to just focus on what we can do and I think to your question about for Vermont and where we are and what I mean That's I think we have reason to be optimistic because we still have a chance We enjoy we are forest strong I like to say in addition to being Vermont strong a big part of that is being forest strong. We enjoy Just these amazing benefits from forest that we don't even really know about And we still have a chance to keep that going I think and we have a culture of People being forest people and of all kinds and I think a sense that it takes all kinds and That we can figure that out and I think we're gonna have to because I think it's kind of our last best hope Michael Snyder. Thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks We've been talking with Michael Snyder the author of woods wise and also the commissioner of forest Parks and recreation in the state of Vermont and we're so glad to have them here and thank you so much for watching