Vermont Land Trust tells Natural Resources & Energy panel it protects land, helps farmers and pursues climate resilience

On Jan. 22 at a Natural Resources & Energy meeting, Abby White, executive vice president of the Vermont Land Trust, and Peter Van Loan, the trust’s forest program director, gave an overview of the organization’s conservation tools, stewardship work and programs to help farmers access land.

The Vermont Land Trust (VLT) holds perpetual conservation easements on farms and forests, White said. "We help people protect land, care for that land, and also connect to the land," she said, and noted VLT has conserved roughly 647,000 acres — about 11% of Vermont — through easements and ownership.

The presentation emphasized three core functions: acquiring or holding protections for land, monitoring and stewardship to ensure easement terms are upheld, and programs that connect people to land and help new farmers gain access. Van Loan described an easement as a payment to a landowner "to promise to never develop their land in certain ways," adding that VLT commits to ensuring those promises are enforced in perpetuity.

VLT staff monitor conserved properties using a mix of remote tools and in-person visits, White said, with an intent to walk properties at least every other year. The trust reported relationships with more than 2,000 landowners, about 3,000 members statewide, 47 employees based around Vermont, and an operating budget in the range of $7 million to $8 million. Last year VLT reported protecting about 87,100 acres; in that year VLT said it protected roughly 6,300 acres of forest land and about 24,100 acres of farmland, and that it helped seven farm families buy land.

To improve farmland access, Van Loan and White described two approaches: paying for conservation easements to reduce land prices for buyers, and temporarily acquiring at‑risk farms (typically two to five years) to lease them to new farmers while they build capital and skills. White said VLT currently owns about 10 farms used in that transitional model.

On climate resilience and ecological restoration, Van Loan highlighted forest conservation’s role in water quality, flood attenuation, habitat and carbon storage. VLT also pursues overlay easements to protect river corridors and rare species, and works with the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) on river-corridor priorities. "We're creating beaver dam analogs to improve stream health," Van Loan said, and the trust also works on dam removals, wetland restoration and invasive-species management. A federally funded conservation innovation grant was described as supporting rotational grazing and soil‑health research that may inform future Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) practices.

The presentation included case studies: the Atlas Timberlands partnership, a late-1990s effort in which VLT and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) bought about 26,000 acres in northern Vermont to demonstrate ecologically minded timber management; many parcels were later transferred to private ownership with easements. White and Van Loan said two large parcels were later sold to TNC and the Northeast Wilderness Trust and will contribute to old‑forest and Act 59 (the state conservation goals discussed in the presentation) targets.

As an example on working farms, VLT described Valley Region Farm in Cambridge, initially conserved in 1992 (about 360 acres) and later diversified into organic vegetables and flowers; VLT and the farmer added protections for 64 acres of wetlands in 2023. White also noted VLT-owned properties that support community food production, such as Pine Island Community Farm in Colchester (a community garden she said supports about 50 families) and other farms where leased producers supply both market sales and donations to food shelves.

Committee members asked how VLT farm properties produce food and who operates them; White said some properties are leased by individual farmers who run their own businesses while providing some produce to food banks and shelters. Van Loan and White offered follow-up contact and noted VLT shares resources through workshops, webinars and publications, including a recent webinar on old forests and an annual report.

The presentation referenced several partnerships and programs repeatedly during the briefing, including work with the Vermont Housing Conservation Board for purchase-of-development-rights funding, DEC river-corridor efforts, NRCS research partnerships and federal conservation innovation grants. Van Loan said VLT’s overlay easements and restoration efforts can support state goals discussed as "30 by 30, 50 by 50" and Act 59 during the meeting.

The trust provided counts of recent activity — planting more than 7,700 trees, protecting 38 miles of stream buffers and roughly 240 acres of wetlands in the referenced period — and said it runs about 1,000 public events annually to connect people with stewardship work.

VLT offered to return for deeper conversation or site visits for committee members interested in on‑the‑ground examples.