Vermont Land Trust pitches expanded farm access, active forest management and climate-focused easements to legislators

Tracy Shell, president and CEO of Vermont Land Trust, and Alan Karnetz, who manages farm conservation projects in the Champlain Valley, outlined the land trust’s strategies for preserving working farms and forests during a presentation to a legislative committee. They described efforts to expand access to land for new and young farmers, support active forest management on conserved parcels, and add water-quality and flood-resilience restrictions to existing easements.

The land trust emphasized scale and capacity: Shell said the group has conserved about 11% of Vermont and holds roughly 2,300 conservation easements covering about 450,000 acres of forest and more than 1,000 farms. The organization owns 44 properties, has roughly 3,000 members, 47 employees and an operating budget of about $7,000,000, Shell said.

Why it matters: committee members pressed the organization on how conservation interacts with farm economics, housing and climate risks. As farmland values rise and the farming population ages, the trust presented tools designed to keep land available for agricultural use — including acting as a short-term owner, selling easements to reduce purchase prices for farmers, and supporting alternative ownership models such as cooperatives.

The land trust described several approaches they use to expand…