As we started up the path toward Vermont’s Woodbury Mountain, we heard drumming on a tree; a moment later, a yellow-bellied sapsucker swooped over us, squealing and flashing its red crown. It was a warm day for mid-May. The tree buds had just opened, unfolding miniature leaves and coloring the forest lime green. Shelby Perry, wildlands ecologist with the Northeast Wilderness Trust (NEWT), led the way. Bob Linck, NEWT’s conservation director, hiked behind me.
We were exploring NEWT’s 6,098-acre Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve in north-central Vermont, a half-hour drive north of Montpelier. “What’s great about this property,” said Perry, “is the scale of it.” Encompassing land in four towns and three counties, the tract includes most of the long ridgeline of Woodbury Mountain (elevation 2,461 feet), a lower ridge, and a basin in between, with a large, diverse wetlands complex. The preserve has dense stands of mast-producing beech and black cherry that provide a critical food source for black bears and other wildlife. It contains a dozen rare or uncommon natural communities, several vernal pools, and 39 miles of streams. This land provides a travel corridor for wildlife between the Worcester Range and the Northeast Kingdom, important for wide-ranging animals, especially as the climate changes. Both Perry and Linck consider this preserve one of NEWT’s most significant acquisitions.
NEWT purchased the bulk of this property in 2021 and later acquired two additional parcels. Under its protection, this former timberland is beginning to rewild and should eventually become an old forest – in other words, a forest well into its second century with several old-growth characteristics, such as multiple canopy layers, abundant standing and downed deadwood, and diverse microhabitats for insects and plants. NEWT’s mission is “to conserve forever-wild landscapes for nature and people.” Based in Montpelier, the nonprofit also has staff in Massachusetts, Maine, and New York and a board whose members hail from throughout the Northeast. Since its founding in 2002, the organization has protected more than 79,000 acres in New England and New York. The Trust owns 24 preserves in the region totaling 36,308 acres and has conserved many additional parcels through forever-wild easements on private lands.
Under “forever-wild” protection, management is minimal. Nature is free to take its own course and to heal from prior human disturbances. (Although it is, of course, still subject to human influences such as invasive species and climate change.) No timber harvesting or motorized or mechanized vehicles are permitted. NEWT may perform restoration and stewardship work such as installing waterbars on former logging roads to reduce erosion and erecting vehicle barriers. Hunting is allowed on some preserves, but requires preregistration and is limited to abundant prey species such as deer. The land is open to the public for hiking, snowshoeing, bird-watching, and other non-motorized and non-mechanized recreation. Some preserves, known as Ambassador Preserves, have walking trails.
Wildlands Scarce in the Northeast
The benefits of forever-wild conservation include the potential over time for a greater proportion of old, undisturbed forest across the Northeast. Old forests offer tremendous carbon storage, clean water, and habitat for bird species and other wildlife that need late succession habitat. They also provide research sites for scientists studying ecological processes, and serve as examples for foresters trying to mimic their beneficial characteristics in younger, actively managed forests. Protected wildlands offer places for people to connect with nature free of the sound of motors.
There is very little old forest or conserved wildland in the Northeast. A 2023 report authored by Harvard Forest, Highstead Foundation, and NEWT and published by the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities conservation initiative found that only 3.3 percent of New England’s land is protected as permanent wildlands, primarily national forest wilderness areas. Adding New York’s Adirondack Park wilderness areas only slightly increases the percentage of wildlands in the Northeast.
The report’s recommendation – and NEWT’s goal – is to increase the percentage of wildlands in the region to at least 10 percent of the landscape. The group is one of the few land trusts in the nation involved in forever-wild conservation, and today is one of the most active northeastern land trusts. With the assistance of major donors, the organization has grown rapidly in recent years. Executive Director Jon Leibowitz joined NEWT seven years ago from a Colorado land conservancy, returning to Vermont where he had attended law school and first became passionate about land conservation. Leibowitz has overseen an increase in staff from 3 to 16 and boosted the pace of acquisition fourfold. In 2022, NEWT completed 11 land and easement acquisitions totaling 14,704 acres, and in 2023, it expects to close on 16 projects protecting 6,865 acres. More staff has been added in part to steward NEWT’s increased land holdings and to monitor easements over a broad geographic area.
“With the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis, and more recognition of the value of old, unmanaged forests, there has been a lot more interest from donors than in the past,” said Linck. “We’re also finding landowners who want to conserve their forests as unmanaged and didn’t fit with other land trusts.” These factors have enabled NEWT to purchase several 1,000-plus-acre tracts in the past few years in addition to Woodbury Mountain. They include the 1,433-acre Grasse River Wilderness in New York’s Adirondack to Algonquin wildlife corridor, and the 6,045-acre Grafton Forest in western Maine’s Mahoosucs.
The path we followed up Woodbury Mountain led to a spectacular, 118-foot waterfall. One of many headwater streams on the property, this cold, clear water feeds the Lamoille River. Other streams on the preserve flow into the Winooski River. Lush displays of wildflowers carpeted the forest floor. Parts of the tract are underlain by the Waits River Geological Formation. Limy lenses in this bedrock add calcium and other plant-loving nutrients to the soil, creating pockets of rich northern hardwood forest.
We climbed a steep path that passed below cliffs with a rock cave used for denning by porcupines. Trees stripped of bark were evidence of porcupines feeding. We lunched at the top of the waterfall, and I learned a little about my companions. Bob Linck is a veteran land conservationist who worked for four different land trusts before joining NEWT, including a 19-year stint at the Vermont Land Trust. He spent much of his childhood and vacations as an adult exploring wild areas, so was naturally drawn to this “dream job” when the opportunity opened up. Linck felt that wildlands conservation was sorely lacking in the Northeast and is of paramount importance, given the global biodiversity crisis.
Perry was unsure of her future direction after college. An AmeriCorps term with a California land trust and a wilderness inventory job in Wyoming sparked her interest in both land conservation and wilderness. After receiving a master’s degree from the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program, she started as a conservation assistant with the Trust eight years ago, moved up to the role of stewardship director, and now serves as NEWT’s wildlands ecologist. “I can’t imagine another organization that would fit me better,” she commented.
A Mix of Wildlands and Working Woodlands
Linck filled me in on the history of the Woodbury Mountain acquisition. The parcel was owned by the E.B. Hyde Company, a family-run timber company, for many years. According to Linck, they did a good job managing the land, and parts of it are well on their way to returning to old forest, the NEWT goal. When the family decided to divest of their holdings, they sold a portion to the Vermont Land Trust, which placed a Forest Legacy conservation easement (allowing sustainable timber harvesting) on the property and resold it to a private owner. The concept of wildlands was a bit foreign to the family, said Linck, so it took a while for them to come to a consensus about selling the remaining land to NEWT. He recalled a Zoom call with 18 family members. As they learned more about NEWT, most became supportive.
“It’s this mix of wildlands and working woodlands that NEWT is striving for,” said Linck. “We recognize that we all use wood and that the majority of our forests must be used for lumber and firewood.” These working forests also contribute to biodiversity, for example, by providing early successional forest habitat that is essential for many bird species and other wildlife.
To further this vision, NEWT sometimes partners with organizations that conserve working lands. For example, during the Grafton Forest Wilderness acquisition, NEWT partnered with the Forest Society of Maine, which purchased a working forest conservation easement on 15,000 acres of adjacent land.
“The quilt of land uses for the Northeast should include wilderness, managed forest, farms, and cities,” explained Leibowitz.
“Managed forests benefit from core wild habitat, and wilderness areas benefit from a buffer of managed lands.” Bob Perschel, a forester and the executive director of the New England Forestry Foundation, which conserves working forests for a mix of economic and environmental goals, shares this view and sees the two organizations as working on “different aspects of a complete vision for the region” and “trying to get away from division.”
“If everything was harvested, forest health would decline,” Perschel added. He suggested that improvements in forestry practices could compensate for any loss of harvestable timber due to wildlands conservation. “By managing forests differently, we can produce more wood per acre, more valuable forest products, and better jobs to compensate for any loss of timberland due to wilderness protection. The number one priority is to keep forests as forests and prevent development.”
NEWT has generally found local communities supportive of their work. They obtained letters from four town select boards endorsing the Woodbury Mountain purchase. A survey of Woodbury residents found that 9 out of 10 were in favor of the project. Many residents have volunteered to clean up trash and to hang signs at the preserve. “People are afraid of change, but see things stay pretty much the same (after our acquisitions),” said Perry.
Because Woodbury Mountain is an Ambassador Preserve, NEWT plans to put in a trailhead parking area near existing woods roads to facilitate public access. NEWT has established long-term monitoring plots to study how the forest changes over time. As the forest ages, Perry hopes the shaggy bark of old trees will shelter bats and boost populations. She looks forward to seeing marten photos from their game cameras someday. Old forests have the snags and large, downed logs for denning that martens (rare in Vermont) need.
Increasing Their Impact
To accelerate the pace of wildlands conservation, NEWT is currently offering other land trusts up to $250,000 in funding through its Wildlands Partnership to protect land as forever-wild. Several local land trusts, including the Cornwall Conservation Trust in Connecticut and the Indian River Lakes Conservancy in New York, have taken advantage of this opportunity.
NEWT is in the process of developing a strategic plan to guide its work during the next 5 to 10 years. One ambitious goal set two years ago is to support the global movement to conserve 30 percent of the planet by 2030 by protecting an additional 100,000 acres in New England and New York by the end of this decade. The organization has already preserved 20,500 acres toward this target. It also hopes to develop more supporters for its mission. In addition to rewilding land, NEWT seeks to “rewild hearts and minds and rekindle the ancient relationship between people, nature, and wildlife,” said Leibowitz.
We continued up Woodbury Mountain, following an old skid trail. The stream below us flowed over alternating light and dark bands of rock. Upstream it tumbled over another high cascade. Now that we were in the preserve’s interior, it felt remote; I could hear no road sound in the distance. An ovenbird – a species that prefers to nest in deciduous forest interiors – called teacher teacher teacher. We passed a series of small seepage wetlands verdant with clumps of false hellebore, and the black flies grew worse. As we ascended to a sag between two sections of the ridge that divides the Lamoille and Winooski river watersheds, the Worcester Range became visible in the distance. A cool breeze blew through the pass, providing relief from the heat and biting insects.
I hope to return to Woodbury Mountain in 20 years to witness the changes in the forest as it rewilds. Thanks to NEWT’s work, there will be many more places like this in the coming years.
Defining Wildlands and Old Forests
One of the challenges of writing about wildlands and old forests is that these terms can have multiple, sometimes conflicting, meanings. Here’s a key for how they’re used in this article.
Old-growth forest: A forest that was never directly affected by intensive human land use and is a remnant of the primary forest that once covered much of the East.
Old forest: A forest with several characteristics associated with old-growth forests, such as large and old trees; trees in a variety of sizes, ages, and densities; multiple canopy layers; and abundant dead and downed wood in different stages of decay.
Wildlands: Lands that are or will be, for the most part, left undisturbed by humans. There may be limited disturbances such as hiking and hunting.
Wilderness: Usually defined as wildlands that are protected by governmental designation, such as federal wilderness areas established under the authority of the 1964 Wilderness Act and 1975 Eastern Wilderness Act. The term is also used more broadly to mean backcountry that is largely undisturbed, although it may lack protection, such as in “Alaskan wilderness.” (NEWT describes its work as wilderness preservation, drawing on this broader meaning.)
Learn More
Watch a video of the Woodbury Mountain Preserve.
Read the report: “Wildlands in New England: Past, Present, and Future.”
For a more detailed discussion of old-growth and old forests, including strategies to promote old-growth characteristics in managed forests, see Catanzaro, Paul and D’Amato, Anthony. Restoring Old-Growth Characteristics to New England’s and New York’s Forests (2022).