Letters to the Editor (3/19/25)

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11th Province?

Hi, Vermont. Upset Canadian neighbour here.

Our best friends just set up a toxic junkyard on their manicured suburban lawn and then demanded our lawn, too. Ouch. Remember when we fought together to crush fascism? When we risked our necks to save six Americans from the ayatollah? Dropped everything to feed and shelter hundreds of your travellers on 9/11?

Do 150 years of friendship mean nothing?

I was pretty disillusioned until you, the people of Vermont, offered a sliver of light in the darkness. Your rejection of the immoral madness of Donald Trump and your support of freedom and democracy lifted my heart [True 802: “‘Powder to the People,’” March 5].

I’ve skied Sugarbush Resort, one of the most wonderful areas east of the Rockies. I cheered when your brave citizens cancelled JD Vance’s day pass.

As they say in Newfoundland: “Good on ya!”

Vermont has always been stubbornly independent. If things become unbearable, let me be the first Canadian to encourage you to take that independence one step further and join our wonderful nation. We border you, with Québec. We share many of the same values and democratic principles, and hey — we have free health care!

We’ll embrace you warmly, as old friends and neighbours (with a “u”).

Meanwhile, sincere thanks to your citizens, your state and your wonderful senator, Mr. Bernie Sanders — a real leader with morals and integrity.

Keep it up, Vermont! And remember, if you ever want to become the 11th province, we’re here for you. Fond regards.

Scot Urquhart

Hamilton, Ontario

Word Missing

[Re True 802: “‘Powder to the People,'” March 5]: With regard to the placard held by the young woman in the photo for this story: If she is honestly protesting against President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, then her placard should more accurately read: “We support ILLEGAL immigrants.”

Brenda Waters

Huntington

‘What Is Right With Our System’

We often read about the arguments that go on in city politics and the breakdown of democracy in this country [“War of Words: A Campaign-Trail Spat Over Israel and Gaza Could Complicate City Council Business in Burlington,” March 12]. But when you engage in local politics in Vermont, you see a lot of what is right with our system. Last year, I was able to attend Town Meeting Day in Hardwick, which was a great experience. Two weeks ago, I enthusiastically voted in my town’s election in Colchester, checking out the candidates’ positions in the Colchester Sun ahead of time.

More recently I was honored to make a presentation on behalf of HomeShare Vermont at the Burlington Ward 1 Neighborhood Planning Assembly meeting at the Friends Meeting House.

Not only was it such a welcoming group, I was also encouraged by the opportunity to see true democracy in action at the grassroots level. Attendees were engaged and beautifully civil to one another in every way. So respectful in listening to one another and providing such important insight into issues that are affecting the ward and the city as a whole.

Democracy still exists in our beautiful state, but too often we don’t take the time to observe it firsthand. I’m pleased that I’ve had these amazing opportunities to be reminded of how well we do it here in Vermont.

Ric Cengeri

Colchester

Noodles and Poodles

Jim Lengel

Duxbury

Food Is Not Negotiable

Gov. Phil Scott plans to cut free school meals [“Vermont Democrats Rally to Save Universal School Meals,” February 21, online]. Act 64 is Vermont’s permanent universal meals law. The statewide cost of the program next year is estimated at $18.5 million. What would the elimination of the program save? Scott contends it would lower education tax rates. It is totally unclear how that could happen, particularly since there would be a loss of about $17 million in federal dollars.

The effect on children, however, is very clear.

According to the latest available data, there were 16,670 Vermont children that were food insecure. That means it is difficult for 14.7 percent of Vermont children to get enough food to eat.

If you are a child in a food-insecure household, you at least know that if you go to school, you can eat twice a day. Having a secure source of food brings comfort and reassurance. It shows a child that the community does care. The meals program has an effect on healthy development. Children’s brains require sufficient food for them to develop into adults who are capable of meeting the demands of good citizenship.

To lower taxes on the backs of schoolchildren who are already food insecure is cruel. I have confidence there is another solution.

Christopher Rice

Lyndon

Log In

Lincoln author Jonathan Mingle spent months researching his March 5 cover story, “Axed Out: Vermont’s Loggers and Sawmills Are Disappearing — and That’s Bad News for Forests.” With grant support from the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources, he laid out the complexities of the local wood-products industry. The piece caught the attention of tree lovers and workers, some of whom had never written to us before.

Related

Vermont’s Loggers and Sawmills Are Disappearing — and That’s Bad News for Forests

Kudos for your excellent reporting on the inherent complexities in managing our native forests. With nearly 80 percent of the state in forest cover, it is desirable that a knowledgeable citizenry helps to steer decisions on a topic as vital to Vermont as forest management. This article helps to articulate those complex issues.

Unfortunately, Vermont, like much of New England, is at a crossroads in managing forests for the many benefits they yield. An aging workforce, warmer winters, mill closures, poor financial incentives, changing political tides, and a public generally unaware of the life cycles of forests, trees and carbon fluxes — all provide challenges to intelligent decision making for healthy forest management over the long term. A confluence of difficult choices has been presented.

One issue that we can address with renewed clarity is the lack of public support for using local products. Yes to recycling, yes to reducing and reusing, and a resounding yes to conservation practices. Yet when we need shelter or paper or heat for our homes, we should recognize there is no better place for Vermonters to gather their wood products than from Vermont’s temperate forests. With our capable stewards and unmatched land ethic, who better to care for our woodlands than our local practitioners?

Hopefully, we will educate ourselves on the many roles that forests play in our lives, framing a relationship with the natural world that builds a pathway that matches our human needs with an enduring ecological balance for our forestlands. Thanks for the outstanding look into a subject that should be top of mind for all Vermonters.

Bill Peterson

North Chittenden

By including “bad news for forests” in the headline, “Axed Out” becomes a de facto opinion piece and not objective news. This is easily apparent by reading the long-winded, meandering article bemoaning the loss of just some entities of Vermont’s forest products industry. Economics drive industry contraction, but in this case, it is good news. Forests play an extremely critical role in storing and absorbing carbon and are best at this by being left alone. As to be expected, the industry and those so-called “forest science experts” at the University of Vermont resist acknowledging this notion and advocate maintaining the status quo.

Peter MacAusland

Burlington

“Axed Out” was an excellent overview of the situation with Vermont’s forests. I am reminded of Bill McKibben’s observation, in The End of Nature, that humanity has altered the planetary environment to the extent that, like it or not, humanity needs to engage with the management of systems that support life on Earth. This fact trumps all ideology and requires us to pay attention to what’s happening and act as though our lives depend on it. They do.

J. Paul Sokal

Panton

I am saddened by the one-sided reporting in Jonathan Mingle’s article. I understand the issues around loss of jobs and loss of businesses. Those are very real issues.

But the concept that people are necessary to restore and maintain health of the forests is arrogant, biased and just plain wrong.

I am a longtime walker and observer in these forests. I have read hundreds of scientific studies. I have watched forests recover in my 69 years. None of it points in the direction that humans improve on nature. The latest fashion in forest management will give way to the next fashion in a dozen years or so; it’s just the latest ploy to preserve cash flows.

The arrogance that the same natural systems that brought us thousands of interacting species somehow need us to intervene is delusional. The arrogance that we, who have done nothing but disrupt and destroy, are now the saviors is mind-blowing.

Tell me you want to maintain livelihoods, and we can talk honestly about that. But don’t confuse the issue with junk science and baloney about the forests needing our help. When it comes to forest health, men with machines have never been the answer. That’s not likely to change.

Phil Merrick

Burlington and Starksboro

It makes me sad to see the closure of so many mills in Vermont. I drove a log truck for 32 years. Now, most of the mills I delivered to are closed. It’s a big change. Most of today’s forests were once sheep farms. One hundred years ago, 80 percent of Vermont was pasture. Both the sheep farmers and the woolen mills that supported them are gone.

Think back to the ’70s. How many dairy farms did Vermont have? Now most are gone.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. The city nearby was known as the Brass City. Now all the factories and machine shops are gone. I live in Florida now and can see signs of the citrus groves from years ago, all overgrown. We had a couple of fishing fleets and markets. Not anymore.

Around the country, think about what happened to Detroit and the car industry. What happened to a lot of the coal-producing states as coal was phased out. Nothing stays the same forever. Although watching the forest industry decline makes me sad, this is not the first nor will it be the last industry to fall to “progress.”

Fred Gundersen

New Smyrna Beach, FL (formerly of Pomfret)

Jamey Fidel endorses “climate-smart techniques” in the Telephone Gap project to increase forest resiliency. It is hard to find much climate benefit in a project that includes 963 acres of prescribed fire treatments, 8,205 harvest acres to reduce northern hardwoods and 600-plus acres of clear-cuts for wildlife habitat.

Today, forests cover 75 to 80 percent of Vermont and many proclaim the forest’s return. But return to what? The original forest that greeted Europeans 300 years ago, or the altered forest clawing its way back in a place now dominated by us?

Ethan Tapper claims these altered forests will not “magically get better on their own.” But they will get better, no magic involved. It will just take more time than a commodity-driven enterprise such as forestry can afford.

Tapper says cutting trees is necessary “because mortality is essential to forest regeneration.” Yes, mortality is essential to regeneration. Has been for millions of years. But only recently has natural mortality been augmented by humans wielding chain saws, drip torches and herbicide sprayers.

Foresters manage forests to realize the benefits, and the benefit most aspired to by the forester is represented by stumps. Tony D’Amato says, “most people don’t like to see cut stumps, but there are different flavors of stump.” His flavors are “exploitation,” “habitat” and “climate adaptation.”

But stumps also represent costs: biodiversity loss, degraded ecosystems, loss of stored carbon. Yes, most people don’t like to see stumps because they represent loss. For them, there will never be a palatable flavor of stump.

Rick Enser

Hartland

We could help Vermont loggers and sawmills by making all building codes allow local “rough sawn” lumber (without a rubber stamp) to be used in construction. They are thicker, stronger, cheaper and not subject to tariffs.

Albert Echt

Burlington

The wood product industry is working itself out of a job, and now we’re supposed to feel sorry for it and the forest? Look at the size of feller bunchers, grapple skidders, and the landing space needed for a slasher and tractor trailers. Many landowners, particularly smaller ones, prefer not to have large-scale mechanized logging on their property for various reasons. The sheer volume a mechanized logger has to cut daily for that $10,000 monthly equipment payment that Cale Pelland referred to is one explanation. Loggers cut trees for one primary reason: to make money. If you aren’t making money, you won’t be logging for long.

Enrolling land in current use allows landowners to receive a tax reduction, which they often invest in hiring a forester to develop a management plan that typically includes timber harvesting requirements. Now they have to cut, but they can’t find anybody to do it because real loggers are aging out. Loggers with a chain saw in their hands and feet on the ground and light-on-land equipment are going the way of the cowboy, because logging is hard work. The younger generation shows little interest. My visits to vocational centers revealed only a few engaged individuals.

How much CO2 spewed into the air from all the diesel burned to get those hundreds of trees from the stump in Starksboro to Québec to Ticonderoga, N.Y.? Trees that had been sequestering carbon for decades, soaking up CO2. Trees for which regrowth will take decades to replace. We don’t have decades.

Bill Torrey

Jericho

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Vermont Democrats Rally to Save Universal School Meals

Vermont’s Loggers and Sawmills Are Disappearing — and That’s Bad News for Forests

Letters to the Editor (4/16/25)

This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.

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