Wilderness Turf War

Gov. Douglas's legendary tactical and political instincts deserted him for a few days last month when he wandered onto the Washington, D.C. turf owned by Sens. Leahy and Jeffords and U. S. Rep. Sanders. The upshot was that the governor allowed himself to be painted as an anti-environmentalist who is out of step with Vermonters on the topic of more wilderness in the National Forest.

Ironically, the near opposite is true, The governor was trying to restore an agreement hammered out over several years among hundreds of Vermonters regarding how much new acreage should be set aside in the Green Mountain National Forest for officially-designated wilderness, where no roads, machinery, bike or horse trails or timber management are permitted.

The long process, shepherded by the National Forest staff, resulted in a recommendation that 27,000 acres should be designated as new wilderness areas. When the delegation in Congress introduced an actual bill, however, they tacked on 19,000 acres, most notably a huge 12,000-acre parcel between Routes 73 and 125 mostly in Rochester and Hancock.

Douglas tried to intervene in the process to get the proposal scaled back to the Forest Service's recommendation. But in doing so he enlisted the help of a noted anti-environmental committee chair from California, not the sort of company he likes to keep. The well-organized Congressional delegation and the well-organized wilderness lobby exploded with anger, and the governor, untypically, beat a hasty retreat. He agreed to a reduction of 6000 acres in the proposal, which now stands at 40,000 new acres including the 12,000-acre piece in Hancock and Rochester.

The Congressional delegation claims that its recommendation of 46,000 acres was a "compromise," since the wilderness lobby had demanded 80,000 new acres. But we agree with Gov. Douglas that the 27,000 acres was the true compromise, worked out with dozens of community groups and people in face-to-face meetings. That's especially true when one remembers that the 2005 House of Representatives—dominated by Democrats, not anti-environmentalists—passed a resolution by a vote of 86 to 56 recommending that not a single new acre be added to the wilderness designation in the Forest.

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The last-minute hi-jinks in Washington has in fact derailed the wilderness proposal until after the election. We thoroughly expect to hear charges that Gov. Douglas has left the 40,000 acres in question "unprotected," liable to be snatched away at any time from "future generations."

Closer inspection, however, will conclude that these acres are already well-protected. Just by being part of the Green Mountain Nation Forest, they are subject to careful planning under the long-established "mulitiple use" philosophy that has made the GMNF such a good neighbor to central Vermont towns for all these years.