Not 27%. The conflict isn’t about values. It’s about a definition — one that excluded Vermont’s greatest conservation achievement from its own accounting.
We ran this analysis using Vermont's own public datasets — and so can you. Below are the findings. The full methodology, step-by-step QGIS instructions, and all data sources are available to download and replicate.
Download the full methodology — including step-by-step QGIS instructions, data source links, and known limitations — and replicate this analysis yourself using Vermont's own public datasets: Download methodology →
Act 59, passed in 2023, set Vermont's 30x30 goals and defined "conserved" as land permanently protected by deed or public ownership — excluding nearly 2.6 million acres enrolled in Current Use. Act 181, passed in 2024, built its Tier 3 maps from Vermont Conservation Design's Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks — designated based on ecological quality and size, not protection status.
Every figure we cite cross-checks against official Vermont state sources. The enrolled acreage figures match the Vermont Department of Taxes’ published data. The 27% official figure matches the VHCB/ANR Phase 1 Conservation Inventory. The 61.3% statewide figure is new — it has never been calculated using parcel-level spatial data — and it is not contradicted by any existing source. It simply hasn’t been asked before.
The error was structural, not malicious. VCD's data had always measured permanent protection as a proxy for development threat. The drafters read that implicit assumption as VCD's definition of conservation. It wasn't. And Act 181 inherited that blindness by statute: it explicitly incorporates Act 59's §2802 conservation goals into its own purpose (10 V.S.A. §6000). A planning map became a regulatory boundary without anyone asking the question a regulatory map must ask: which of this land actually lacks protection?
The result: a regulatory map that unintentionally manufactured a statewide development threat — when the genuine risk is concentrated in a handful of resort towns where development pressure is real and documented.
They must move together because the problem exists at three levels of Vermont's land use framework. The window is narrow: LURB's May draft and the Conservation Plan's summer 2026 deadline are the two immediate pressure points.
The Conservation Plan should recommend amending Act 59's §2801(6) to replace the permanence-only standard with a durability-and-function standard — consistent with what most comparable states have adopted. Land enrolled in long-term stewardship programs with enforceable commitments and demonstrated compliance should count toward Vermont's conservation goals.
With that correction, Vermont's baseline becomes visible: 61.3%, 3.6 million acres, already conserved. The Conservation Plan should then set goals that reflect it: 30% permanently conserved by 2030 (keeping that goal and its urgency intact), 70% conservation mosaic by 2030 — enrolled and permanently protected lands counted together — and 80% mosaic by 2050. These are harder goals, not softer. They require Vermont to steward the genuinely at-risk land.
Tier 3 should be repealed. The maps, as currently designed, are the wrong instrument for the corridor — a blanket regulatory tool applied to a targeted problem that voluntary stewardship, local zoning, targeted FMV easement acquisition, and the Forest Legacy Program are built to address.
Act 250 currently processes roughly 390 applications per year and approves 99.7% of them. Expanding Tier 3 jurisdiction would subject all landowners across 2.8 million acres to Act 250 review for qualifying activities — vastly expanding a system never designed to govern Vermont's working landscape. Where farm and forestry exemptions apply, they must still be claimed through the application process. The exemption is the destination. The process is the burden.
The Legislature should establish a Wildlife Corridor Forestland category within Current Use — a third enrollment tier alongside Managed Forestland and Reserve Forestland, tied to ecological stewardship within VCD priority corridor blocks. Act 181 already recognizes this logic: its definition of habitat connector (10 V.S.A. §6001(47)) explicitly includes land used for farming, logging, and forestry. The statute understands that working lands are the corridor. The enrollment system should reflect that.
Published in Vermont Commons, March 2026. Read the full essay →
We wake each morning fifty yards from our barnyard in Townshend. From our window we watch the hills change with the seasons — crocuses pushing through thawing soil in April, red maples igniting in October. In just a few weeks, our goats will begin giving birth, the first kids spilling into the late-winter light. Our daughters, nine and five, are growing up here, learning the rhythms of land and animals the way we have.
For sixteen years we have owned and operated Big Picture Farm — a goat dairy and confectionery. Our forest is enrolled in Vermont's Current Use program. Our fields are working pasture. This land is not speculative acreage. It is our livelihood, our retirement, and — we hope — our children's opportunity.
Last week, after eight hours at Town Meeting, one quiet statistic stayed with us: last year, Townshend recorded roughly three to four times as many deaths as births. That number sits beneath nearly every challenge this valley faces. Our towns are aging. Young families struggle to stay. The tax base thins a little more each year. Every piece of legislation right now should be measured against a simple question: does it make it easier or harder for working families to build a life in rural Vermont?
When Louisa pulled up the Tier 3 map and traced our woodlot, that freedom is what she saw being taken away. Under the current draft, our woodlot falls within the mapped area. Each of our future decisions would run through Act 250 review — separately, expensively, uncertainly. The land will still be ours. But the ability to use it thoughtfully, to adapt it to our lives, will have narrowed considerably.
The wooded parcels along rural roads — many of them recently timber harvested, modestly priced, the lots that actually show up within reach of a young family or a working couple trying to buy into a rural community — are precisely the ones the Tier 3 methodology targets. The corridor mapping looks for intact forest on both sides of roads. Those are the affordable parcels. Under Tier 3, that entry point will get significantly more complicated.
A third of Vermont's entire land area is enrolled voluntarily in Current Use. Yet the Tier 3 maps were built without overlaying that data — publicly available, updated monthly, and simply not consulted. A parcel stewarded under an approved forest management plan for thirty years is treated identically to one with no stewardship history at all. The legislature is being asked to expand regulatory jurisdiction over thousands of Vermont landowners on the basis of half a map.
A farmer friend put it plainly: "My woodlot is my 401k."
Rather than imposing new costs on the fragile rural communities that have been doing the conservation work all along, Vermont should compensate them for the public good they are already providing. In most states, the strictest oversight falls where growth pressure is highest. In Townshend, the dominant pressure is not fragmentation. It is the quiet arithmetic of 37 deaths and 12 births last year.
We are trying to remain intact as communities as much as landscapes. If we overlook those communities, then who are we conserving Vermont for?
Formal comments, published writing, and methodology
The original piece naming the problem — Act 59's definition and what it means for working lands families.
PublishedRead on VTDigger →The follow-up: the 61.3% statewide finding, the statutory link between Acts 59 and 181, and the three-part path forward.
ForthcomingDownload PDF →The complete policy framework with 108 years of conservation history, statutory analysis, four-part solution, and fiscal modeling.
Download PDF →Submitted to LURB (Act250.Comments@vermont.gov), April 2026. Supersedes February 17 submission. Asks the Board to exclude enrolled parcels, concentrate Tier 3 on sub-25-acre resort parcels, and recommend the Wildlife Corridor Forestland category.
Download PDF →Submitted to VHCB and ANR, April 2026. Documents the 61.3% statewide finding and asks for the definition fix, mosaic targets (30/70/80), and Wildlife Corridor Forestland category.
Download PDF →Full documentation of the corridor and statewide analyses: data sources, QGIS methodology, key findings, and known limitations. All data from ANR/VCGI public datasets.
Download PDF →If you’re working on the Conservation Plan, Current Use policy, the Tier 3 rulemaking, or wildlife corridor legislation — we’d be glad to share our QGIS project files, underlying datasets, and intermediate outputs. If you want to replicate or challenge the analysis, we welcome it. The methodology document has everything you need. We’re happy to discuss the framework with legislators, conservation organizations, land trusts, and landowners.
lucas@bigpicturefarm.comA project of Big Picture Farm, Townshend, Vermont.