Tradition and Progress: How logging in Vermont has developed with an Eco-Conscious eye

It’s a quiet early summer morning at the junction of Routes 114 and 105 in Brighton, VT. The tranquility of this rural Vermont location is occasionally broken by passing cars and downshifting trucks. Off in the distance you hear it begin, the two-stroke engine of a running chainsaw, followed by the crack and crash of a felled tree. Who could possibly be awake already? Logging families, like the Bandys of East Burke, find themselves rooted almost as deeply in trade as the trees themselves.

Custom logging in Walden, VT

“Logging runs deep in my family” says Walter Bandy III, “my father has started from the bottom and built a family run logging operation with two of my uncles that have done it their whole lives; and my brother, freshly out of high school, is looking to make a career out of cutting wood. Over the years most all of the guys in my family have been in the woods and logged at one time or another.”

The future of Vermont’s logging economy remains as ambiguous as the future of its dairy economy as operating costs increase and young loggers to the trade decrease. “Public opinion of logging is generally much more negative than that of agriculture simply because it is misunderstood,” says Scott Ritter, a 2011 graduate of the UVM Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, “People hear news stories about huge clear cuts and other terrible management and do not understand that it is possible to extract resources from a forest in a sustainable, ecologically sensitive manner. In fact there are a lot of situations in which you can actually create a more healthy and productive forest through logging.”

“The recession hurt a lot of people, the price of fuel is killing us, it costs a lot to keep the equipment running,” says Bandy. “All the natural disasters that have occurred over the last few years are helping the loggers by making a big need for lumber and paper.” The Vermont Land Trust has established programs to help alleviate financial burdens on farmers and loggers, such as “farmers and loggers who sign up for the program will only be taxed on the use to which the land is being put, and not assessed at its development value.”

Men logging in Newfane, VT circa 1909

Logging in Vermont began in 1794 with the first shipment of oak to Quebec. Before modern conveniences of 18-wheeler trucks and railroad, logs were shipped over waterways like Lake Champlain. The logging industry success eliminated all the good lumber trees from the Champlain Valley by 1840. According to Ritter, “Much of the land was cleared not for the value of the timber but rather to make space for sheep farms. When sheep farming was no longer economically viable many people moved west abandoning their fields to revert back to forest land. Once these forests started to mature again the timber was no longer as valuable due to the transcontinental railroad allowing Western lumber to be brought to market back east. With reduced timber values there was not the same pressure to continue harvesting at the same unsustainable rate.” Logging was the first non-agricultural industry in Vermont, few people realized the money that logging could make. By the mid-to-late 1800’s, almost 80% of Vermont was devoid of trees. To say that logging became Vermont’s fastest growing sector during the 19th century would be an understatement.

Denis Piette, of Piette Lumber in Irasburg, joined Vermont’s lumber industry in 1980 by converting the family dairy farm to an Eastern White Pine sawmill with his father Marcel and brother Louis. “At the time, we were only producing boards off one saw and an edger, then we found that it would be beneficial to use our byproducts, so we went to the next step of getting a debarker to peel the bark off the trees to be used in landscaping. And the sawdust being pulled off the saw we sold to local farmers because it was really tough for farmers to get sawdust in the area.”

A mini-documentary about my family's transition from dairy farming to running a White Pine sawmill.

This is not the only parallel that can be drawn between Vermont’s logging and agriculture industries. “Logging is like farming, if you’re going to make it and stay floating you’re working 7 days a week. ‘Got to make the hay when the sun shines goes for us too,’” says Bandy. “On the other hand farmers have government assistance and they get away with a lot more.” “Agriculture and logging are similar in many respects and they both involve growing a renewable crop which you bring to market,” says Ritter, “From an ecological standpoint a well managed forest is far superior to even the best managed farm land. Well managed forests export fewer nutrients into waterways, provide native habitat for wildlife species, extract and store carbon, reduce flood risks by slowing the overland flow of water, protect stream health, and a provide a myriad of other ecological services.” (see: Silviculture)

“They’re more aware of environmental ecosystems,” says Piette about loggers, “they don’t want to damage the land when they’re harvesting logs across streams, they don’t want to pollute the streams, for the general logger they seem to have a care about that. There are some loggers that if they don’t, they know they’re not going to stay in business because the state will put them down, which I think is a good thing to keep our environment as clean as possible.” “Sustainability is a bit of a tricky subject in forestry,” says Ritter, “as you can manage a woodland ‘sustainably’ while still causing environmental harm. As long as you don’t remove more timber during a logging entry than the forest is able to re-grow in the time between entries it is technically a sustainable removal. This says nothing of the ecological impact of your management decisions.”

Forestry in Vermont has served as a fundamental piece of the economy since the 1800’s, but the ways in which logs are harvested have changed. The forestry industry of Vermont took a grave hit through Globalization and more small towns face weak economies and now weak forest ecosystems to sustain themselves. Vermont economics have favored development with an eye on tourism since post World War II efforts. In his 1984 autobiography, Perry H. Merrill, Commissioner of Forests and Parks in Vermont from 1929 to 1966, wrote this about the future of forestry in Vermont, “As you drive along Vermont Highways you will notice that for mile after mile little cultural care is being given to our woodlands. Each acre of forest land demands the same care as the gardener or the agriculturalist provides his crops…We cannot continue the present practice of cutting only the high quality timber and leaving the undersized, deformed, and diseased specimens.”

The next time you look at an item made of wood, think about where it came from and who are the people who produced that wood. In the age of understanding climate change and promoting energy independence, utilizing local wood as a fuel could be beneficial environmentally as well as economically. For people seeking assistance with property management and resource planning, Scott Ritter suggests, “another important thing that I don’t know how you could really legislate is people actually utilizing foresters to plan their forest management. A good forester will help a landowner to make money from their forest while protecting its ecology and long term sustainability. Additionally, they will only hire loggers who they have worked with in the past and have a good track record of following best management practices.”

Sources

Bandy III, Walter: Email interview April 24, 2014

Crawford, Matt. "If a Tree Falls in the Forest | Feeling Unheard, Logging Is the Underdog Industry on Vermont’s Working Landscape." Vermont Life 31 Oct. 2012: n. pag. Web. <http://www.vermontlife.com/if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-feeling-unheard-logging-is-the-underdog-industry-on-vermonts-working-landscape/>.

Dern, Claude. "History of logging in Vermont." History of Logging in vermont. N.p., 2005. Web. 17 Feb 2011. <http://www.bccdvt.org/benningtonashistory/Thivierge-Diaz/engsite-history.htm>.

Nemethy, Andrew. "The Bacon Loggers Strike Again." VTDigger. N.p., 21 June 2011. Web. <http://vtdigger.org/2011/06/21/bacon-loggers-strike-again/>.

Niles, Hilary. "Should Vermont Loggers Be Licensed?” VTDigger. N.p., 20 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://vtdigger.org/2013/10/20/vermont-loggers-licensed/>.


Piette, Denis: On camera interview November 26, 2014

Ritter, Scott: Email interview April 23, 2014