Vermont officials say Use Value Appraisal underpins private-forest stewardship and statewide forest economy

Keith Thompson, forestlands program manager for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation (FPR), told the Agriculture, Food Resiliency & Forestry Committee that Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal (UVA) program enrolls roughly 2,000,000 acres and provides large tax relief that helps private landowners keep forests intact while supporting active stewardship.

"Use value appraisal does an amazing job, and it touches on every one of these," Thompson said, describing the program’s role in keeping land affordable for owners and linking them with foresters and markets.

Thompson opened with the scale and economic context: Vermont’s forest economy generates about $1,400,000,000 in direct output, employs roughly 9,100 people directly (about 13,800 with multipliers), and—based on preliminary inventory data—forest carbon accounted for about 67% of the state’s greenhouse gas sequestration in 2022. He said those values depend principally on private landowners, who own about 69% of the state’s forestland.

Thompson described UVA’s statutory purpose as preserving the working landscape, rural character and ecological systems of the state. He said the program is administered jointly: property valuation and review handles taxation eligibility while FPR administers the forest-land side, including review of management plans and on-the-ground inspections.

Key program rules and enrollment figures Thompson outlined:

- Eligibility and management: A property must include at least 25 acres enrolled as forest land with a minimum of 20 acres of productive managed forest land. Owners must submit a forest management plan and map at least once every 10 years; plans must meet the commissioner’s minimum acceptable management standards. Certain categories—reserve forest land and ecologically significant treatment areas (ESTAs)—are managed for conservation objectives rather than sawtimber production and have distinct eligibility criteria.

- Subcategories and scale: Productive forest land comprises the vast majority of enrolled acres. Reserve forest land was created recently and, at the time of Thompson’s presentation, included 25 parcels; eight of those were new enrollments. Conservation land enrollments numbered fewer than 200 parcels. Thompson said fewer than 20,000 acres statewide were enrolled under the reserve/ESTA-oriented conditions.

- Valuation and tax effect: Forest land in UVA is valued for taxation using a formula tied to per-acre income-generating potential; Thompson said forest land in the program was valued at $188 per acre (75% of that value if more than one mile from a class 1–3 road), and last year’s per-acre figure had been about $141. Thompson illustrated the effect with an example: a 100-acre enrolled property might pay about $376 per acre in annual taxes, versus about $3,000 per acre if valued at development rates, a difference he said could be roughly $2,600 per acre in that hypothetical.

- Enrollment and administration: Thompson reported about 55% of eligible forest parcels are enrolled and about 70% of eligible acres are enrolled, based on a 2022 calculation. UVA began in 1980 and has grown to roughly 2,000,000 enrolled acres; Thompson said there are about 40,000 in conservation (transcript wording) and roughly 5,500 in agricultural land categories. He cautioned that rising parcelization increases per-parcel administrative costs: since 2003 acres increased ~43% while parcel counts rose ~70%.

- Inspections, transfers and staffing: County foresters review roughly 2,000 forest management plans per year, visit 650–1,000 properties annually, and perform about 300 presentations that reach roughly 3,000 people. Statutory inspection targets imply about 1,700 visits per year (one per enrolled property every 10 years), a target Thompson said FPR is not meeting. Thompson also flagged roughly 1,500 property transfers per year; each transfer resets the education and stewardship relationship with new owners.

- Reserve forest land and management nuance: Thompson clarified that enrollment as reserve forest land is not a simple opt-out from stewardship. Parcels less than 100 acres must have 50% of the parcel in significant or sensitive conditions (ESTAs) to be eligible; parcels 100 acres or greater must meet a 30% threshold. Owners may be required to manage actively to restore structural and species diversity in some cases; in other situations owners can manage for old-forest characteristics without sawtimber as the primary objective. Thompson noted many reserve parcels are managed with a mixed approach that still produces some timber income to help offset management costs.

- Markets, social license and outreach: Thompson said markets, availability of skilled contractors and social acceptance of forest harvesting are all necessary for landowners to act on management plans. Consulting foresters (roughly 50 statewide) prepare most management plans and work with landowners and loggers. FPR partners listed in the presentation include NRCS, Vermont Fish & Wildlife, Vermont Tree Farm, and Audubon Vermont.

- Technology and administrative reforms: FPR digitized about 16,000 forest management plans to allow remote administration and is rolling out a new mobile inspection system developed by County Forester Hannah Dallas to aggregate inspection data and automatically generate landowner-facing reports. FPR also completed a county forester redistribution to balance workloads (roughly 1,200–1,400 parcels per county forester under the new configuration) and is working on a submission portal to accept digital management plans and reduce hard-copy map costs. Thompson said the Current Use Advisory Board is updating its rule and FPR is undertaking a larger overhaul of the minimum acceptable management standards.

Committee members pressed for more detail on several points—Representative O’Brien asked how much of the enrolled acreage is managed by active farms; Thompson said he had not run that analysis but could. Committee members asked about program compliance; Thompson said about six properties per year are removed for violations, while other shortcomings are addressed through plan amendments or corrective measures (for example adding water bars to trails).

Thompson framed the program as foundational but administratively complex: "It works, and people depend on it," he said, while noting margins are tight and any change requires careful coordination to avoid unintended effects on the program’s multiple goals.

The committee set aside roughly an hour for the presentation and agreed to return at a later date to dig into technical details Thompson deferred, including the use-value formula and finer points of valuation and management standards.