- Welcome to the third talk
in the Forest as Natural Climate Solutions track.
This is Jesse Pyles from the Smokey House Center,
and I'm gonna let him introduce himself
and his co-presenters
in the video format that I'm about to play.
And then we'll have some questions,
time for questions at the end.
- I'm Jesse Pyles.
I'm the Executive Director at Smokey House Center.
And I'm joined today by Blanca Begart and Seth Inman,
who are recently finished
Yale postgraduate Forestry Fellows at Smokey House.
And we're gonna explain to you how we assessed our land,
our forest lands, and how we see the future unrolling
for Smokey House Center forest land management.
Smokey House Center is a 5,000 acre property
at the north side of Dorset Mountain
in Southern Rutland County.
We're a nearly 50-year-old nonprofit organization
focused on conservation, agriculture and education.
We often use the tagline land, agriculture and learning.
And for about 50 years,
we've been using this incredible landscape
as a background for meaningful service and learning
primarily for young people here in the region.
Today, we want to talk with you about our efforts
to tee up the next generation
of forest land management in Smokey House.
But we can't do that without thinking about the way
that this forest land has been managed previously.
Smokey House Center
exists here in Southern Rutland County
on Abenaki and Mohican lands.
The history of human influence on this landscape
is much longer than Smokey House's ownership
of this piece of property
and stewardship of this piece of property.
But even beyond that human interaction,
we recognize in the right-hand image here,
the connection of Smokey House's property
to so much other forest lands in the Northeast.
Smokey house Center is a large privately owned parcel
for Northeast lands,
but it's part of a much, much larger network
of connected forest lands.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that moving forward.
Central to Smokey House's mission
is sustainable natural resource management.
And some of that management
really is an outgrowth
of the agricultural influence
and the human management of this land
before Smokey House became its own entity.
And Smokey House really gathered together this 5,000 acres
in the '60s.
And so we've included a couple of images here
that show you aerial photos of how the land was used
prior to that time
that Smokey House amassed this incredible property.
And it was largely pieced together
from agricultural parcels, old family farmsteads
that continue, some of them,
to operate as farms at Smokey House.
But we can see
that forest land management in this area
is very much related to farmland management in this area.
And so Smokey House has an interesting history
and a role to play in imagining some of these connections
between forest and farmland.
In fact, Smokey House has used forest and farmland
at times in order to create generate revenue
that helps support our nonprofit functions.
So as Smokey House Center
has managed our forest and farmlands these years
with education in mind,
we've also continued despite being a nonprofit
to pay property taxes.
And in doing so, we determined that was in our interest
to enroll our land in Vermont's Current Use Program,
as it has been established and developed
and changed over time.
So Smokey House Center has enrolled much of our acreage
into the forestry category of current use.
And so we get tax benefit of doing so.
And we also have enrolled some of our lands
in agricultural current use.
So this image from 2012 tells you a little bit more
about the current land coverage
in terms of forest and agricultural uses.
But it's important to recognize that since the '80s really,
Smokey House has relied on our enrollment
in forest current use
to keep property taxes down,
but also to help us create timber revenue,
managed much of this forest land for timber revenue
to support our nonprofit functions.
About 10 years ago, we recognized
a real shift in program markets.
Whereas we used to have a focused effort
on working with high school kids from the local area
in forest and farm work
as a workforce youth education and development program,
we saw that the funding for those programs,
the demographics of students in that age category,
the needs for the services we were offering
really diminished about 10 years ago.
And so as we approach 2022,
we're also looking at the need
to renew our forest management plan
under the current use program.
We also see a need to attract a new education audience.
So we saw this as an opportunity,
recognizing climate and ecology mandate of the times,
we saw this as an opportunity to shift,
not just from a focus on timber and timber revenue,
but a focus on new conservation values
at Smokey House Center.
And so we thought we needed new thinking
in order to do that.
And relying on some connections that we had
with folks at the Yale School of the Environment,
we developed, with folks in a forestry program there,
a forestry fellowship that would help us think differently,
think anew about how we might emphasize conservation values
for Smokey House's forest land management moving forward.
And so we were really happy
after working with those folks at Yale
to land on Blanca and Seth,
who were able to join us as Forestry Fellows.
And I'll let Blanca now tell you more
about what brought them to Smokey House
and how their work started.
- Thank you so much, Jesse.
Yes, so Seth and I were both just graduating
our master's programs and in touch with professors
in the Yale Forest School about this new fellowship.
It was developed as an opportunity for those of us
who had had some extensive forestry
and land management coursework
to get more applied land management experience,
like right as we were graduating.
Seth and I had both done private management plans
for individual landowners as part of our education.
And for us, this was a really cool opportunity
to work at a larger scale
and work for a nonprofit that had different stakeholders,
and an organization that might have different goals
than those we've worked for in the past,
you know, conservation goals,
but also history of forest management
and also an education mission.
And so when we started the fellowship,
one of the first things we did was talk
to Smokey House representatives,
like the Board Chair, Curtis Rand,
and who's also a forester,
and the longtime consulting forester, Steve Handfield.
And we also did a survey of all the board members.
And so the aim was to sort of understand the vision
that they had in bringing us on,
and understand more broadly the value
of forests and forest management to the organization
and the people involved in it,
and also understand some of the preliminary thinking
for switching into the conservation category
under Vermont's Current Use Program that Jesse mentioned.
The current use program taxes forest and agricultural land
based on the type of use it's under.
And the desire was to change Smokey House Center
from the productive timberland category
to the conservation category.
So in 2012, Smokey House was enrolled
as productive forest land
under Vermont's Current Use Program,
which requires that timber management
be one of the goals for the property.
And while timber management has occurred here historically,
and will continue to, the main focus of stewardship,
especially in more recent years but even since the beginning
has been and will continue to be
ecosystem conservation and education.
So switching to the conservation status
would grant more flexibility,
allow land to be managed in broader ecosystem units
beyond just the stand level, if desired.
And it would allow Smokey House to still engage
in sustainable timber management
for as long as they want to, but also to forego that
if and when desired and to also receive some tax benefits
from being in the program under this category.
In terms of the new conservation plan,
Seth and I based some of our work
off of the original 2012 forest management plan
for productive timberland, where the forest
had already sort of been assessed and described.
But our work was to update that
and to do a new site assessment,
really with the conservation goals
and the conservation category in mind.
So there were other researchers and staff
who had done some mapping of Smokey House forests,
but we really had to go understand the land ourselves
and ground-truth what had been done,
and see how the landscape might be re-conceptualized
in a new kind of broader conservation plan.
So we started by doing desk research
through aerial imagery and an online soil survey,
online hydrology maps, topography maps.
There's a ton of digital resources out there,
Vermont Natural Resources Atlas,
Vermont BioFinder, and other geospatial data resources.
We also had a lot of informational conversations
with local experts from organizations
such as Vermont Fish and Wildlife, Audubon,
New England Forestry Foundation,
to sort of better understand
some of Smokey House's unique resources,
and to prepare for two three-day field visits
that we did to the site in April and May of 2021.
So during those visits,
we walked through nearly every stand on the property,
making qualitative observations on the state of the forest.
And this was with help of course, from Jesse
and Steve, the consulting forester for Smokey House.
And so we used all of these qualitative observations
about the vegetation and the health of the forest
as well as geospatial data
to categorize the landscape into units for management
based on natural communities,
which Seth will shortly describe,
and also based on some of the other site features
like waterways, topography and land use history.
- Thanks, Blanca.
Yeah. So as Blanca mentioned,
we did all this field work and also the background research,
and used this book by Elizabeth Thompson
and Eric Sorenson and Robert Zaino,
which is a really valuable resource
for the natural communities of Vermont,
and was really applicable
to Smokey House's just very large property
in the context of the surrounding landscape,
so that we could be documenting
based on what we were seeing on the ground,
the different flora like these flowers,
some of which are indicators of rich sites,
or, you know, certain moisture levels,
and came up with a sort of delineation of the land
that was a little different
from the very timber-based stand maps.
And so these natural communities
we think will help emphasize conservation values
and sort of the more ecologically
and conservation-focused management
that Smokey House is trying to promote.
And so here you can see side-by-side
the sort of old stand map
colored by just very basic forest type,
and the newer delineations, which are very broad,
and not the fixed lines necessarily that you see on the map,
but typically more of a gradient.
But here you can see some of the really special areas
like the Alder swamp created by beavers and on the river.
And in the south up in the mountains,
there's their montane spruce-fir forest,
which is pretty unique for this part of Vermont.
Up in the old sugar bush,
there's just some massive sugar maple trees
that have been around for a really long time.
And some of these special features are the types of places
that would sort of get lost in just a stand map.
And so we're trying to keep them relevant
and mapped here in a slightly different way
that still needs a little work
so that they're not quite as large in some places.
And we're gonna be working with
the Vermont state partners
to try to get those into manageable chunks going forward.
So that's something still pending.
But as we've been drafting the plan,
we have been trying to keep conservation values
sort of at the forefront.
And to do that, we have been using
sort of different layers of maps,
like for example, these invasive species,
some of which need some pretty active management to control.
But there's other parts of the forest
that would need less active management to promote,
like for example, old growth forest,
which can sort of be left alone to do its thing.
So now we're in the review process of this plan,
hoping in the next six months
to have it ready for submission in April.
- Thanks so much, Seth.
As Seth pointed out,
we are looking ahead toward the submission of our plan.
And it's important to note
because there are tax implications,
that the tax implications aren't tremendous for us.
That is, the appraisal of our forest lands
under the forest category and the conservation category
won't amount to a significant amount of tax expense savings.
But it does say something about our intentions.
It tells us a little bit more
and tells the world, it aligns more our focus
on those ecosystem values and educational values
than on simply the timber harvest values,
and the management of a 5,000 acre property
on a timber harvest schedule
that doesn't really fit our goals.
And so we're excited to have had the assistance of the state
and these Fellows to help us draft a plan
that more fully aligns with our values as an organization.
We see that this means that there are gonna be opportunities
for us to really focus on active management
in a lot of areas.
And we're also excited
about the places where it's appropriate
for us to rewild or take a less hands-on approach
to prescriptions for management
on the land here at Smokey House Center.
We're most excited about the educational opportunities
that this provides, that we were able to expand our audience
and our education market.
We want to continue work
with organizations that are a part of this cooperative
in the forest ecosystem monitoring work.
We wanna do more monitoring, more research, more outreach
related to forest land management moving forward,
and really understand the place of this special landscape
in the broader ecosystem of work that's happening
in landscape management at the landscape level.
The adage goes, "You can't manage what you don't measure."
And for the last several decades,
we've been measuring these forest lands
in stands, according to their timber value.
We hope that by developing this plan,
we were able to measure instead conservation values,
and that our work of managing this land moving forward
more in line with those values
that we have as an organization
for more resilient climate future of forest lands
in our own particular property,
but also as they connect to others in the region.
And so we'd be remiss
if I didn't thank Seth and Blanca
for all of their hard work and helping us with this plan.
And also it's just been a joy to work with those two,
but also our long serving board chair and forester,
Curtis Rand, who connected us with the folks at Yale,
Blanca and Seth's advisor and mentor at Yale, Joe Orefice,
and also would like to tip our hat
to Steve Handfield who's been our forester
on the ground here at Smokey House
for this last decade, and was instrumental,
not just with his previous plan,
but with his excitement and his on-the-ground knowledge
of these forest lands and helping us develop this new plan.
So as we continue to partner with our friends at the state,
we recognize the work of these folks,
and again, recognize that we are stewards of this landscape.
And we hope that the way
that we've developed this conservation plan
sets up the next generation
of forest management at Smokey House.
- We have a question, about one minute for questions.
So there's one in the chat.
"Can you comment a bit more
on your local community engagement slash education
around your work?
I can imagine there are plenty of producers with a back 40
that would greatly benefit from examples like Smokey House."
- That's great. Thank you.
And thank you, Annika.
I'm happy to connect with folks
otherwise afterwards or offline,
but essentially, you know, our longstanding work
has been with partner organizations,
and we hope that we can understand more
about what's happening in our forest land management
so that we can do more outreach
through, you know, cooperatives like FEMC,
but also with other partner agencies who have platform
to extend their audience.
We do want to later engage
local land owners and land managers.
And I think that our friends at Merck Forest across the hill
are doing that with this
connected to Taconic initiative down here
that we're engaged with in part.
We see opportunities like that
to not just connect
with other landowners with large parcels,
but as we understand more and more
about how our management unfolds
under this conservation plan,
how we can connect with individual landowners,
especially where land connectivity,
our abutting property owners and others who connect
into these wildlife habitat corridors particularly
or these resilience flows
kind of mapped to Smokey House property.
And I'll recognize
that it's an admittedly broad presentation,
but really draws on so much of the work
that so many folks in this community do.
So I wanna recognize that
and thank all of you for that work.
I think that we have more work,
like so many of the good stuff
that's been shown in these presentations,
ahead of us in the coming years,
so really been grateful to see other people's presentations
during this conference
and to recognize that some of that kind of work
can happen anew at Smokey House
because of our new conservation values focus.
- Hey, Jesse. - Hey, Andy.
- I've got a questions for you.
So I work for Vermont Fish and Wildlife,
and just sort of curious if you have much engagement
with the town that your organization resides in.
- Yeah, we do, and partly through the planning commission
and the work that they've done
in developing a new town plan,
and partly just the occasional cause to be at select board
in terms of municipal planning levels.
We also have someone from your team
living next door here in Danby, who we met with,
Luke Groff. - Luke Groff, right?
- Yep, yep, Luke is right around the corner here.
And, you know, that said,
we also do a lot of public and community outreach.
So we have a lot of education programs with local kids,
volunteers, visitors, those kinds of things,
largely through farm activity,
farm and food security work.
But increasingly, you know, we wanna make sure
that people are connecting to this land
in other interesting ways.
Does that answer your question,
or are you looking more about planning kinds of?
- Yeah, no, just sorta curious.
You know, I work as a team of two,
primarily with towns across the state,
and we get a lot of engagement
in specific areas where our program's known.
One of the places where we'll occasionally come
down into your neck of the woods,
but I think we're just not as well known in that area,
and so always looking to meet people
from different parts of the states
who are already hubs in their communities.
- [Jesse] Yeah.
- It sounds like you've been doing
some great work down there.
You know, we're also very community engagement-focused.
I got sort of sparked by excitement
hearing about some of the stuff you're doing.
- Is there an opportunity to have you present
down in this neck of the woods?
- Yeah. So sometimes what we do is, you know,
we present on all kinds of things,
you know, habitat connectivity, wildlife.
You know, sometimes we'll do like a broad presentation
and then if a community wants to work with us
in greater detail, you know, maybe we'll come back in
and focus in on what their needs are.
But just wanted to reach out and say hi
and introduce myself.
- That's great. I recognize your name, Andy.
And yeah, I'll be in touch.
Like I said, I see new opportunities
for doing this kind of outreach and public engagement
because we're reorganizing under this conservation plan.
So I think relying on folks like you to engage the community
and connecting your work to this neighborhood
would be really great.
- Yeah. Great.
Well, thanks for your talk,
and looking forward to catching up another time.
- [Jesse] Thanks, Andy.
- Bye. - Bye.