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Fish & Wildlife presents Vermont Conservation Design: a blueprint for intact, connected and diverse natural lands
Summary
Vermont Fish & Wildlife outlined the Vermont Conservation Design (BioFinder) project that maps priority forest blocks, riparian corridors and natural communities to guide conservation, connectivity and management across the state; staff said the tool supports land conservation, town planning and state land management.
Robert Zano, an ecologist with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, briefed the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee on the Vermont Conservation Design (the department’s BioFinder mapping and planning effort) and explained how it identifies lands and waters that sustain ecological function now and under climate change.
Zano said the design uses a “coarse‑filter” approach—protect representative examples of natural community types and landscape features (forest blocks, wetlands, riparian corridors, geophysical settings) rather than attempting to conserve each species individually—and that the design stacks multiple spatial layers to create a statewide blueprint for an intact, connected and diverse landscape.
At the landscape scale the design maps discrete habitat or forest “blocks” and prioritizes them by size, condition and regional context (the department uses nine biophysical regions). Zano said recent mapping used LiDAR‑based canopy and land‑cover data to increase spatial detail and that the dataset now identifies several thousand forest blocks (the transcript referenced roughly 4,000 blocks at a 20‑acre threshold) and connectivity pathways across the state, including north–south linkages important to species movement in the northeastern U.S.
At finer scales the design incorporates mapped natural communities (alder/shrub wetlands, black spruce swamps, alpine communities, lake and river shorelines) and sets targets for structural forest attributes—young and old forest—to restore habitat diversity. Zano said Vermont has relatively little old forest remaining (the transcript noted an estimate of less than 1% old forest), and he recommended using a mix of conservation tools—permanent conservation, reserves, management, tax programs and voluntary incentives—to achieve ecological goals. He said conservation priorities derived from the design are not intended as a regulatory map but as a planning and investment tool for agencies, towns and landowners.
Zano showed maps comparing existing conserved lands with design priorities and said past land conservation has, in many cases, overlapped high‑priority areas but that gaps remain in some regions. He described use cases for the design including town and regional planning, state land management, prioritising land acquisitions and identifying places for connectivity investments (culvert upgrades, bridge projects). He referenced the department’s BioFinder web mapping tool as the public interface for the design.
Committee members asked about the relationship between conservation targets and working forest economies, youth‑ and community‑engagement and how the design will inform Act 250 and other regulatory processes. Zano said the design is intended to inform those conversations and to support a full toolbox of voluntary and regulatory approaches.
Ending: The department presented the Conservation Design as a science‑based resource to guide conservation investments, planning and agency decisions; the department encouraged towns and conservation partners to use the BioFinder maps in local planning and project design.
