Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Don't think we're gonna go as late as 04:30, but it'll depend on our questions. So why don't we turn it over to you? I see you've got the presentation up, and it is on our committee page.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Thanks, Chair Durfee. Thanks, members of the committee. Oliver Pearson. I'm the director of the Division of Forest at the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Rec. And I'll share some information on the same theme that professor Keaton spoke about earlier. Hopefully, my information is consistent, but there's nothing contradictory here. And there there may be some things that I'm repeating that that professor Keaton already shared with you, so apologies for that should that should that be the case. So on this subject, I sort of wanted to start out with, like, the the too long, didn't read summary of what I'm gonna say. You know, the big picture is FPR. We've been very enjoying a long standing and productive partnership with the US Forest Service. A lot of that comes under the Cooperative Forestry Act of 1978, which allows one of the deputy areas of the US Forest Service, state private and tribal forestry, to support shared forest management objectives with states. And a lot of that comes through funding that the Forest Service provides to Vermont FPR to support the implementation of activities around those shared goals for forest management. And that's as I'll as I'll show you, that's an important part of our of our annual budget. We also, since 2017, have had a direct partnership with the Green Mountain National Forest under what's called Good Neighbor Authority that came out of the the farm bill from around that time. And that's actually just expanded. They you know, as they meet under the Trump administration, expanded productivity goals, combined with hiring freeze, they've asked us, can we help? And I'll talk more about that later. But we support that because it's promoting active forest management, giving jobs to young people, and getting wood products out to support the forest economy. So on the subject of today's discussion, the reorganization, I sort of feel it has more cons than pros for Vermont. It's it's a real shift of focus to to Western state issues, fire response and prevention and and productivity. That's understandable to some extent given that there's more forests out there. Fire is arguably a bigger threat in the West and Intermountain states in the West Coast, although the the the incidents and threats of wildfire are increasing nationwide now. And there's there's more opportunity for for forest management getting products out to males out there, But it's it's it's also aligned with who the leadership is of USDA and the Forest Service, where they come from, what their interest is. As I'm sure professor Keaton said, there's there's there's been announced the closure of many research and development facilities nationwide. Although, as he also alluded, just in the last twenty four hours, it seems that there might be a bit of a reversal on on some of those. You know, I and I think another problem with this reorganization is that it creates more uncertainty for US Forest Service employees and could lead to more departures. And I say more because 2025 is already a year of significant uncertainty in departures for US Forest Service, which I'll talk about. And then some of the reorganization that the Trump administration wants to

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: do around wildfire management could create disruption and add complexity to our response capacity. Part of

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: the story for me is also following money. And it's it's as, you know, as as you hear these these the US foresters talk about, we're making these changes for organizational efficiency and streamlining and getting the staff closer to the people in the trees. We also have to look at what the White House has requested in terms of funding. And in both federal fiscal year '26 and federal fiscal year '27, significant amounts of the budget for research and development and private and tribal force should been zeroed out. I'm sure you the specifics of that. Fortunately for those of us on the receiving end of those funds and believe in that work, Congress reinstated that funding in '26. We'll see about FY '27. That's still a work in progress. And just kind of as a disclaimer, I did work for the US Forest Service for five years, and I also spent some time at Harvard Brook Experimental Forest that professor Keaton mentioned earlier. So current state of the US Forest Service, I'll be brief here. They manage a 193,000,000 acres of land. So FPR manages 360,000. They manage a 193,000,000. So very big difference of scale. A 154 forests, 20 grasslands across 42 states. It's somewhere around 30,000 employees. So the number is approximate because of so many resignations in 2025, and about 10,000 wildland firefighters. Current leadership appointed by president Trump, not a career forest service employee for the first time ever. Tom Schultz has a land management background at West, hence, this the shift of focus out there, and has worked as a lobbyist for the timber industry. And his vision, which which to his credit, he's articulated is what he calls cooperative federalism, which really means delegating work and responsibility to states, sometimes with funding and tax, sometimes without. Really what what I think is driving the organization is under Trump's second administration, the government writ large at the federal level and enforced services that's driving to reduce costs via staffing cuts and closures of facilities and programs to the detriment of of lots of things. And then talking about the uncertainty, the forest service lost almost 6,000 employees in 2025. That's almost 60% of its workforce. So a year ago, I would have said they have 35,000. Now it's approximately 30,000. And I don't have exact details on this, but one of the reasons why the Green Mountain National Forest has asked us to get in partnership with them is because they seem to be

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: under some sort of hiring freeze.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Brian?

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: Oliver, what's been their budget and what are they sort of targeting to cut? Maybe we'll go into this later, but I just want

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: to Yeah. Will go

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: into what what kind of number? You guys could put that up.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I'll go into that later. The budget is in the billions, and you'll see I have a slide that shows exactly what they're trying to cut in FY '26. I won't jump ahead. We'll we'll get there. So I know you've asked for your patience and your patience. So backing up. So policy priorities currently, wildland fire focus, which is very appropriate given some of the issues that we've seen nationwide. California comes to mind, but also closer to home. So increasing readiness for wildland fire response and prevention. There is this changing federal approach where the the Trump administration wants to move all firefighting federal lands into a Department of Interior National Wildland and Fire Service. Congress hasn't made that happen yet, so Forest Service still retains its own firefighting capacity. But if the Trump administration had their way, that would go away, and everything would be within the interior. And the interior would cover both interior lands and forest service lands, which are under the Department of Agriculture. Timber production, clearly a priority. Trump's first day in office, he issued an executive order mandarin mandarin to be 25 increase in timber production and streamlining permitting. There's benefits to that for getting product up to market, there's benefits to that for wildland fire prevention. There's also going to be some challenges and risks with that. This is, well, it really depends on who you ask. And the Green Mountain National Forest is a very small part of contributing to that 25% increase. Recognize the same Thank you.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: With, you know, the mandate is 25% increase. And of course, we all know we need soft inverter to to build. Do we have the facilities? I know we don't have the facilities here in the Northeast are are lacking. Sure. But do they have the facilities out in the Northwest? Do they have the big sawmills? I've heard a lot of this is a lot of the lumber we get where our big trusses are coming coming out of Vancouver because we we let those facilities go in the Northwest due to not harvesting our forest.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. So that's a great question. Is there the facilities for milling? Is there is there also market demand for that type of increase? Because, know, there's if you're not gonna be able to sell the timber, cutting it has mixed benefits. So I don't really know the answer to your question. You're right. We do import a lot of softwoods from Canada. We also sense un milled softwoods out of the country regularly. And more and more mills have when you bring wood to a mill, that's what they're storing in containers on-site until they can ship it somewhere and it's what they're actually milling on-site, which is problematic in my opinion. I think the administration's vision is tariffs could eventually, if you sort of take this leap of faith, lead to increased manufacturing capacity in the Continental US. And if you increase productivity, there's your supply combined with the tariffs and strategic investments, which

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I think are lacking in manufacturing to create that virtuous cycle not happening yet from what I've seen and read. Who would want to invest into a modern sawmill that would cost tens of millions of dollars to build,

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: not knowing what the next administration is gonna do to our largest block of timberland ready to go. I know there's a lot of private owned timberland out there, but, you know, this tariff thing I isn't helping either side of

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: the border. I agree. I think I might treat that as a rhetorical question because I don't have an easy answer. We've seen more mill closures in the last five years in Vermont than we've seen mills starting. Those that have started are very niche and specialized. And the uncertainty created by tariffs, impacts on interest rates, housing construction slowdowns is more of a negative impact on markets and those in the wood industry than any tariff regime to create benefits that could sort of spur industrial additional industrial and and, you know, processing facilities. So I I don't think this strategy is bearing fruit yet. It might. I'll just continue running a list of policy priorities for organizational efficiency. I think Professor Keaton alluded to some of this reduction in tasks and staffing, restructuring, maintenance costs. I think some of that is, as Professor Keaton said, a red herring because many of the sites that they're planning on closing don't have significant overhead costs. Some of them do, but some of them could be handled by partners or just don't exist. Policy as sort of now in law under the big beautiful bill, which serves in line with the administration's goals, funding rescission, anything that wasn't allocated, is gone. And then mandatory timber harvest increases on an annual basis. A piece of the policy that that that is bipartisan and senator Welch supported at our recommendation was to fix our forest act that would that would speed up management and run fire response of which do you mind some permitting, and everybody loves it. But on on balance, we supported the Fix Our Forest Act as did senator Welch. That is sort of stuck in the legislative process. It's not passed or been signed into law yet. Other priorities, just increasing recreational access. I think the chief is a big fly fisherman, so he supports recreation, which is great. And then as I mentioned, he he believes in cooperative federalism, so this idea of shared stewardship with states is is a strong use for us, so it's priority right now. So briefly on our relationship with the Forest Service in Vermont, our budget is around 14,000,000 or so this year, and about a third of it comes from grants from the Forest Service. So we're we're very closely linked with them. Our partnership is governed by a 2017 state forest action plan. It's gonna be updated in 2030. And they provide annual core funding to us in five areas, which allows for us to hire positions, provide grants to partners, do innovative work, buy equipment, and support other wildland fire response and prevention. And those five areas are forest health, urban and community forestry, wildland fire, stewardship on private lands, and then implementation of the state forest action plan. We also bring in funding via competitive grants with things like bridges to support water quality prevention and logging jobs, dollars 5,000,000 forest resilience grant to help private landowners, loggers, foresters manage private forests for climate resilience, landscape scale restoration, think about managing sugar bushes for a mix of wildlife habitat and optimum sugar production, and wood innovation grants that do things like put advanced wood heat in schools. So most of this funding, as I said, comes to us from state, private, and travel forestry, and some of it comes to us under the Good Neighbor Authority Agreement. And I just highlight state, private, and travel because as you'll see in a minute, the vision that the Forest Service has for the future is that that part of it goes away. And under this Geneva authority, we're now directly supporting the Green Mountain National Forest to meet their expanded productivity goals by hiring staff, implementing NEPA approved forest management products. That's new for us. We haven't done that before. We have four attempts, Two of them started on Monday that are supporting forest management on the Green Mountain National Forest, and we're working with JFO to get a permanent limited service position created to to lead that work. And that's because they wanna meet productivity goals, but they can't hire staff. They have money, so they're giving money to state to do their work for them. That's very much in line with this cooperative federalist ambition that she has. We're doing it because it supports the forced economy, and it it provides employment for young people, and it supports our forced management goals. But there are there are mixed opinions about that in the FPR. I'll I'll leave that there. So getting to the subject, reorganization. This is a sort of fundamental operation shift for the US Forest Service. I believe it's part of his Trump administration effort to reduce federal government's size and budget. I think that's what's driving this. There is this focus on extractive industries that I mentioned in wildland fire. Those both make sense if if your mindset is is Trump administration pointy, but the increase in timber production will come at the cost of some of the other things that Americans will cherish their national forests for. Leadership says they wanted to move staff closer to forests, more forests in the West. They're moving the headquarters from DC to Salt Lake City. This This is where you sort of get into the fundamental nature of this shift. They've had a regional office model for decades with nine regional offices. Those are all closing, and they're moving to 15 state based directors, which they believe will enhance direct communication, locals like us, states, and tribes. And then probably what professor Keaton spoke about was that this reorganization is accompanied by a major reduction in research development funding, staffing, and facilities, consolidating dozens of research stations into a single entity in Colorado. A week or two ago, they said they were gonna close 57 sites. They're gonna maintain 27 sites. There's a number of other sites that were still in a to be determined category. As professor Chittenden mentioned, they'd walk that back a little bit. They've said they're gonna keep Harvard Brooklyn, New Hampshire open, and now Bartlett in New Hampshire and all the other 57 sites that were announced to be closed two weeks ago are now being considered for potential closure. And I think that's because of the significant pushback to this plan. But these these changes are expected to impact thousands of positions. And as I said, there's this, like, center of gravity shifting to Western states. What that means is there'll be less sort of focus on the dynamics of the Northern forest, ecosystem and urban forest. And as we struggle with things like climate change, fire, invasive species, there won't be as much focus on our forest because of this shift out west. And that'll just put more pressure on universities to try to fill that gap with less funding and fewer fewer colleagues at

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the forest service. Oliver, the nine existing regional offices, where are in the Northeast, where

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: are they? Are they We've been we the Northeast Region has been 20 states headquartered in Minnesota covering those late states in the Northeast. I have a map of that I'll show Okay. In a sec.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Can can I just ask a quick one?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: This is all really great information, but and this may be for you or it could be for Professor Chittenden, But this whole focus, you know, the propaganda was all these wildfires were a result of failure to manage and it was all this fuel, this undergrowth of of fuel. Is that helped by expanding harvest? Or what is that doing for fire suppression? And is there any indication there aren't 25% increase? We're talking the dog fur and the, you know, lodgepole pine and all those coniferous, predominant coniferous forests out west. I mean

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. It's I think the answer is it depends. You know, you know these forests. You have them Northeast very well, and I I would argue that there probably is not a direct correlation between addition lots of additional management and reduction in wildfire risk in our forests because of the amount of humidity, the amount of vegetation, how how our forests regenerate. And there's probably more arid forest ecosystems out west where reducing fuel may have some some benefits to reducing the intensity of wildfire. And if you think about a managed stand that's been thinned and has a stocking level somewhere around the beeline, that may be less susceptible to fire than a stand that's never been managed and has twenty year old trees that are extremely dense. And a drought comes or just a dry ecosystem, and that's the kind of force that the fire could really sweep through. I think the answer is it depends and probably a fire ecologist could give you much better answer than that, but it is part the US Forest Service, our traditional management will reduce wildland fire risk. I think for every person who says that, there's someone else who says, well, data isn't that clear. Here's some exceptions to that.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Let's go back a 115 to 1911 or nineteen o nine, from Kalispell, Montana over to Cortland, it's the most catastrophic forest fire in American history. And that was being actively managed by private interests with without any sense of science, but and there was so much fuel. It it just it changed global tensions in North America.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. So I think the region. But people will point to that and say that's an example of

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the way despite the management, we still have catastrophic wildfires. So where where does this connection really exist? Yeah. I mean, to doctor Keaton or professor Keaton's point is this science is is critical to develop telehealth.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So this is this is just hot off the presses today. I I was sent this. This is a screenshot of of the call. I get the National Association of State Foresters in DC. This is the current proposal for what the Forest Service is gonna look like. So you see there's no more state private and tribal forestry that's been replaced by used to be its own deputy area, three in the Forest Service, and now there's just a director for cooperative forestry under a field operations division. So they're really deemphasizing that. Then you see there's these 15 state directors, and we're down here the director for the Mid Atlantic and the Northeast. And then, you know, so this is really where everything that used to be research and development, you can see they have a director there, was one deputy area, cooperative forestry, and the national forest system are all kind of rolled into this one unit called field operations that, in my opinion, really deemphasizes both research and development and working with states and private entities. So and this is what, I think, your question, we used to be Region 9 of the Forest Service, which was all these 20 states here. Now Vermont would be under the Northeast Region, which would be headquartered in Warren, Pennsylvania, and it's essentially a shift from a government type region of 20 states to us part of the state directorate of nine states. So that's not really a big significant change in my opinion. I think and it shows that, you know, while states like Arizona, New Mexico, Montana have have their own state director, they're just they're just lumping 13 Northeastern states together despite a significant amount of national forests in West Virginia, Vermont, Hampshire, Ohio. So again, it's sort

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: of sort of showing that, you

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: know, what they're really interested in, what they're allocating staff is in the Western States, and they're sort of lumping these other parts of the

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: country together. Is that based on

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: who making our back like we did our

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: skin back? Looks pretty similar. But to me, operationally,

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: as long as there's people I can work with in Warren, Pennsylvania, that's not that different than today working with people in Milwaukee. I think what's more troubling is this is lack of clarity of how state support will be provided. So today, I'm seeing for the first time, there's gonna be a director of cooperative forestry who I think will work with states. But up until that's just learned that today, and that's that's still a work

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: in progress. Arizona and The United States Federal. In California and Oregon and Washington

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: and Montana and Utah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I can understand the Northwest the amount of timber they have and California with those redwoods, but Arizona and New Mexico,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Utah and I mean Arizona and White River National Forest. Think some of Apaches for oceans.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: So that's where the big outcome.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I mean Someone could probably spit out numbers of units and acres and why it makes sense for these big states to have the wrong directorate. So I think this just to me, this just shows that's where the area of focus is, and I was sort of looking at the Eastern Half Of The US as, you know, these these areas where things can just be lumped together, which may or may not affect our relationship with the folks. George Claus,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: who brings Boris, the other guy including Yep.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think don't need time for Getting into the research and development question. So up until recently, we thought they were gonna have 20 sites retained, only one in New England and Durham, New Hampshire. 57 being closed, including the Aiken Research Lab in Burlington, the Bartlett New Hampshire Experimental Forest, and the Westfield Mass Research Facility, and then a number of others, including Hubbard Brook, were on a to be determined list. So now we know that Hubbard Brook is going to be kept open, which is incredibly good news, and part of it is, as Professor said, now being reconsidered. Some progress because of advocacy, which I'll talk about in a sec. So this may repeat a lot of what Professor Keaton said, but some of the impacts of these research and development closures: We believe that Forest Service really excels at long term place based research. It's very applied. We use it to serve us as natural resource managers. And this reorganization will essentially dismantle a highly functioning science program and reduce the ability of the forest to provide data and information to states to effectively manage natural resources. As has been said, we look at studies coming out of Harbor Brook and Bartlett all the time to guide us in our decisions about land management. Things like our UVA standards and our management approaches for planting timber harvest in state lands are informed by research. And then really critical is our best set of data for what's happening with forest statewide, the US Forest Service FIAA program, forest inventory analysis. That's being maintained, but it's already operating on a Houston budget. They've already gone from business in every plot in Vermont once every five years to now only once every seven years. Now they're they're cutting that by another third. So that's just gonna reduce the accuracy and the utility of that dataset, which we rely on for for forestry. And someone asked me, how much forest cover is in Vermont? And what's happening next? Put the FIA data. So that's upsetting. And as I said, most of what we know about forest management dynamics comes from US Forest Service reaching from development. Not that the little bit of role that universities play as well, but this information is applied and it's produced in a way that the state forestry, who's not an academic, can digest and use. Things like acid rain, deforestation nutrient runoff come from Howard Brook. A lot of the studies on silviculture, forest management, and protecting the forest ecology come from part of it in New Hampshire, again, for the northern for the Northern Harvard forest ecosystem. And some of the advancements of what what's what's happening with climate change and generation and how forest sequestered carbon also coming from those experimental forests. There's going to be over 6,000 Forest Service employees impacted by these proposed facility closures, 2,700 of them. That doesn't mean they're all going to quit, but they may have to relocate if they want to skip their job. We already lost 25% of the PhDs in the Forest Service in 2025 of the layoffs there, so this is not a great trend. I won't dwell on this last point, I think Professor Keith covered it real well. So what's being done? There's some good news here. 82% of the public comments about the organization were negative. There's been strong pushback from elected leadership nationwide and all the state forces, generally one in 50. There's been suggestions of forest partnerships to reduce costs, if that's one of the main motivations to close these sites. As Professor Chittenden and Governor Iow in New Hampshire obtained USDA commitment to keep Harvard Book open, All sites that were a week ago listed for closure have now been reversed to evaluate for possible closure, so that's good. I would agree that advocacy is important. At the congressional level, we know that can affect funding. Structure of a department or an agency is within the administration's authority, but I still think advocacy is important. I strongly endorse professor Kate's idea for this committee to reach out to our congressional delegation. And I'm going to DC June 8 to join a bunch of other state foresters to pound the pavement with our congressional representatives and the committee staffers to complain about your organization, expressive concerns, as well as advocate for FY '27 funding. So you need someone to carry a letter. Can you

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: take Jed with you? Because he's messing around.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Happy to take Jed. He's he's he's good company. He's gotta wear his red suit, that maroon suit.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I wanna see that one in action.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: What I'm but I also think you gotta follow the money. See what's really going on here. You know? Because the organization must be viewed in tandem with the administration's funding request and actions, and this gets into an earlier question. So f y '25, budget was passed before the election. President Trump inherited that budget, but really worked hard to rescind significant amounts of Forrester's funding. Ultimately, that wasn't successful. They did delay a portion. It was delayed to be made available to all the recipients until July with only two months left at the end of the fiscal year. It took a lot of advocacy to get the force just to release money that had already been appropriated by Congress. Now it's a whole debate with the Trump administration. Who has the power of the purse? The twenty sixth budget request essentially zeroed out state private travel forestry and research and development. So this is, to your question earlier, which you can see, there's 23 enacted, 24 enacted, 25 we say estimated because there's a continuing resolution that year, it's a little murky. And you can see what the president requested in his '26 budget, which zeroed out everything and research here and zeroed out everything they're trying to force to. So to bring that a little closer to home, here's the priority programs for Vermont. Forest stewardship, which is working private landowners, state and volunteer fire assistance, which provides a lot of equipment and funding to work with the municipalities, and our own fire response efforts, urban community and socially, these great landscape scale restoration grants which allow us to address forest health challenges. Our data shows us that red oak and white pine are not regenerating well in the last seven years. We're going to apply, if they make an opportunity available, for landscape restoration to try to figure out what we can do to support white pine and red oak regeneration. So these landscape scale restoration grants are really important, that was zeroed out. The legacy program wasn't zeroed out that makes funding available for forestland and conservation, but it was significantly reduced. So you get the idea, that was fiscal year '26. Eventually Congress enacted, based on a lot of advocacy and their own good decision making levels similar to 2024, and that was a Republican led Congress. And so the Republican led Congress did not agree with the Republican administration to zero out all these parts of the bill. I

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I just wondered on your earlier comment whether when money is released so late in the fiscal year, if it's not, say, allocated or spent, does it get clawed back to? So it's sort of a, know, you've got one month to spend, we're getting it back as surplus.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That's that pocket recession term you may have read about, and I credit Russell Vogt, who heads the OMB, for being a genius to figure that one out. What happened is in Region 9, the grants and agreements people made really a herculean effort in August and September in the last two months of the fiscal year to get those funds allocated to states and other partners. And I think most of it got allocated and a little bit was clawed back or lost, but around they the clock because they were committed and they saw this was their chance to to support the goals of the program. So we got everything we expected at the very last minute in '25, and it was late. It caused disruptions, but we got there. I will just make one other sort of point is even with the FY '26 budget, the current administration leadership of the Forest Service is still finding ways to tinker with it. So the first column was it was enacted for FY '26, Then there's these two costs where the leadership is removing dollars from what's been appropriated by Congress to do things that cover undefined fixed costs and to support what are called leadership decisions. It's So never a dull moment and that's within their prerogative, but it's frustrating because the Congress surpasses the budget, think great, there's 37,000,000 for urban and community forestry that should lead to us getting our very measly scale of $300,000 Now you have to worry about a 20% reduction in those funds, that's going impact what comes to Vermont. Maybe, we'll see. In theory, this idea of cooperative federalism, would that entail instead of more funds going to federal government, can that maybe send more resources to the state?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It could and it could.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think what we're seeing with FEMA, which serves as part of cooperative federalism, states need to do more in there on their own financially. What our experience in Vermont has been the Forest Service, Green Mountain National Forest asked us to support forest management on the Green Mountain National Forest. They're making funds available for two years to get going, and then they're allowing us, if we want to, to keep timber sale revenue to support those positions. We haven't said yes or no to that phase. We're gonna start with the two years where they're paying for everything and see how it goes. If there's enough NEPA approved forest management projects, I think that could work. But if we have to do the whole environmental review process that that's required in federal lands and that gets caught up in litigation, then we the revenue stream that we are expecting could get tied up. I will say that many states out West where chief Schultz is from are doing this successfully. Idaho has a 15 person team of state employees doing forest management projects on federal lands, and they're funded entirely by timber sale revenue. So it it does work in other jurisdictions, whether or not it work in Vermont and Mississippi.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm gonna flag that when you talk about timber sale revenue, because I know that there I've heard concern just from constituents who don't often reach out to me, that these cuts would lead to, combined with the band aid, a 25% increase would lead to more wholesale harvesting in Vermont's forests, and that there might be somehow less oversight because of the staff heads. Just somebody sort of here seeing some headlines, maybe reading a little bit, and maybe they haven't really thought about this before, or maybe they have because some people obviously have not clearly thought about it. So maybe this isn't the time to go into detail on that, but it would be interesting to just I think it'd be interesting for the public to better understand, is that actually likely to happen here in Vermont?

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We got into this partnership because there's a significant amount of what the US Forest Service called shelf stock, Existing approved projects that have gone through the whole NEPA process have well designed, scientifically based forest management prescriptions that are not whole tree harvesting, that are not clear cutting, but are things like a shelterwood cut that removes certain older species, leaves the canopy intact, and has certain goals focused on wildlife habitat restoration, climate resiliency, and will not be done under poor oversight. So that's why we're entertaining and trying this partnership out. So I think it's a very valid question. And if I was sitting on the sidelines and read the headline, I'd probably ask the same question myself. But I think at least for the Green Mountain National Forest, very deliberate environmental review has been done, good silviculture, good prescriptions have been developed, and those projects are now being implemented. We're not even and I said when we we're considering this partnership, I don't want to get involved in anything with telephone gap because that's new and that was contentious. So we're doing older projects that are much smaller in scale than anything with telephone gap. So I don't think that's a particular concern in Vermont, but I understand. The other thing is a 25% increase, that's going to range from where you are. So a forest in Colorado might increase by 40%, whereas the Green Mountain mushroom forests are probably going to increase by only about five or 10% because of the market demand here and the size of the forest. So I think that those numbers that you read about will be applied selectively, and they'll vary by location. And and if you've seen me talk about the net growth to yield ratio, which is increasing, it's over three to one right now, or net growth to harvest ratio, excuse me, I think our forests do need more management. And so if we can support that on the Green Mountain National Forest as well as on state and private lands, I think that's a good thing.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm not sure if it was you who shared this at one time or somebody else in testimony that if you at the cutting, the harvesting that takes place on our state lands and on our national and public lands and compare that with private, it's much less intense on the public land. Correct. For various reasons.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Just to add context, chairman, for Oliver, chair Durfee had a constituent where they were promised by the forest service to engage with the abutter adjacent to the log landing. And the forest service failed to follow through on that promise to engage in whether it might be hours of operation or an access, a catastrophic failure of credibility, trust, and in charge of this, before we were in session, he reached out to me about this. It's just, it's an unacceptable error whether I'm cutting a butt at you and I go Forrester and I fail to let you know, engage you in the process. So Jared Durfee is asking for real lived experience, it's not telephone gap that got all the headlines with standing tree, it was a small operation on the glass and very side of

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Other side of it, yeah, parallel and state line.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: But it really, you know, in our world, you can't screw up. It's just like with dairy and a violation of the Clean Water Act, stand on your head to make it. Well, you don't need this bad. It's not bad. That's a really good point you've made, but it's real and someone's gotta be on top

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: of that and follow through.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. It's a great cautionary tale. I hope that was a one off and I hope that the US Forest Service has tried to remedy that with the landowner. But my hope is that any any sale we're involved with would follow best practice around working with a budding landowner to inform them to identify hours of operation that are within state or federal law and respective.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative O'Brien.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, just quickly on that Western example you just gave, I wondered if the 15 state employees who were helping to accelerate national forest cuts, did that come at the expense of 15 Forest Service employees? They rescinded there. They add 15 state who are essentially getting funded by harvest.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. That took place pre Trump two point o, and that took place when the Forest Service was hiring a lot. So I think what happened out there is there was just a goal to do more management, and there was this idea of cooperative federalism through these good neighbor authority agreements. So I I think both were built up simultaneously. What's happened since 2025 to to to all kinds of probationary staff at the Forest Service and career staff who've accepted deferred resignation is is probably a very different story. But my understanding is that type of partnership at the state level complemented what was happening at the federal level and wasn't at the expense of positions.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Oh, because I was wondering if that model might happen here where Yeah. Or a service

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think they

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: And FDR all the time says, pay it yourself, but accelerate harvest.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It's a good question. What happened with the Green Mountain National Forest in 2025, they lost some of their probationary staff because the administration looked for that easy way to get rid of people who who hadn't didn't have those two years of experience and were easier to to fire. So certainly, they certainly lost some staff. I also have been told that there is a seasonal employee hiring freeze, and that's been in place for a few years. And I don't know the specifics of if if there's a full time permanent hiring freeze or not. I do know that the forest service is is is prioritizing these types of partnerships with states, which is why they asked us to support forest management activities on federal lands. I don't see that as coming at the expense of any jobs on on within the forest service at this particular point in time. I think I see that as them saying, our own people can contribute this much and get this much work done to to meet these increased productivity goals If we make other resources that are available now to bring in a partner like the state, we can do more. And I think that's that's their incentive for getting us involved.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: But it's not like FBR has capacity without funding.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: No. So we're exactly. So we're using their funding to hire new people, And they're seasonal, and they want a year round person will be in a limited service position. If that funding dries up, our partnership with them will go back to what it is today, is a much more limited partnership. I'll just move along quickly in the interest of time. So federal year fiscal '27, we're looking at a a very similar situation, '26. President's budget, again, zeros out all programs in state private travel force and research development. They've set up forest legacy and forest inventory analysis, and there's some more specifics. What's notable is the fourth bullet, the the the forest products program, which funds timber harvest and associated partnership agreements such as the one that we've been discussing, has a 350% increase in the president's budget, and that's how they have the funding to hire the state. And the Green Mountain National Forest has also hired the Rough Grouse Society to help them with timber sales and forest management projects as well. So they're looking at multiple partnerships. And so these partnerships under the good neighbor authority are really in line with what the president's executive order said, and congress has mandated annual timber targets have to increase under the big beautiful bill. So what that's why we're seeing this shift under the sort of cooperative federalism model. Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bos- Yeah.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So it says there's a 350% increase in forest products investment or something like that. I mean, is the expectation that we're gonna increase forest harvesting by 350%? I mean, when they say we're gonna fund everything through extra timber timber harvesting, what are we looking at for that? Like, are what what level of change are they expecting if they go with what they want?

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: But there's two goals. There's the executive order to increase productivity by 25%, and so you need a lot more money just to meet that target. But then I'll just go back a few slides. Just the big beautiful bill has this other articulated goal right here. From FY twenty six to FY thirty four, US imports must sell at least 250,000,000 board feet more timber each year than it did the previous years. That's a lot. That's the the big beautiful dove. So, you that would be mad by larger forests than than the Green Mountain National Forest. That's for sure. But every forest supervisor has some target that he or she needs to meet to increase timber production under both the executive order and the big beautiful village and snuggle off the land. Like it or hate it.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thanks. Gregory Lipsky, and then I think I'm gonna, after that this question stays, let Oliver finish it because I wanna Right. Say on this.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: This is critical for American consumers. I have watched for decades great timber being loaded on ships, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, on Asian ships that take buy that wood, take it away, process it, distribute it in a global food chain, and also sell it back to us. So as far as our processing capacity in the Northwest, all of The United States has diminished. This says increase the sales by x x x, but doesn't say anything can help consumers where affordable housing, where there's gonna be a lowering of cost, was saying that not exporting this. Yeah. Right. And that's been the trend for three or four decades. And I

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: think my colleague Catherine Cervideo would say, markets. Are there markets for all this additional wood? Can it be sold? And can it be sold in The US to support employment, value added processing, revenue generation at the local scale. We know in the Northeast that's difficult. I don't I

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: can't speak to the rest of to Ralph Nelson's time gearing up these shuttered mills in Oregon and Idaho and all over. Yeah. It's There's no lender in the world. It's

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I'll I'll I'm almost done. I'll just so the f y twenty seven budget request looks pretty similar. This is at a different scale, but you can see research zeroed out, state private and tribal forestry zeroed out, and the wildland fire stuff zeroed out because they wanted to go over to that new Department of Interior National Wildland Fire Service system. So our work in June with congress will be to advocate that these numbers go back to levels closer to FY twenty six and not be zeroed out. I'll just speak briefly. So this wildland fire service is a Trump administration priority. It was established in January. It's an attempt to consolidate all federal wildlife management activities within the National Wildland and Fire Service within the Department of Interior. And there's pros and cons to this. And and my fire team will say, it's not a horrible idea. You're just good about it. You're just bad about it. So this but it hasn't been fully supported by congress yet, and it's still work in progress. And so today, there is this National Wildland Fire Service that covers DOI lanes, and Forest Service still has its own 10,000 strong firefighting staff for USDA lands. And, of course, they collaborate because fires cross borders. So this is still work in progress. I won't go through all these cons in the interest of time, but this is something that I think we're all looking at and studying, and we'd love to see how plays out. So last slide. This is pretty repetitive. I think advocacy is important right now to talk about what's good and important about the workforce and what has been doing, how we can maintain and grow that as opposed to losing all that. There are some positive results from this advocacy with this announcement about Hubbard Brook and some of the closures being reconsidered. And I'm optimistic that our partnership with the Forest Service through state, private, and tribal force, which is now I think being called cooperative forestry, will persist, thanks to Congress seeing that that's important, reinstating those fundings that have been zeroed up by the administration and the support of really dedicated and hardworking U. S. Forest Service field staff who are friends and colleagues. Uncertainty about the status of both research and development and state private and travel forestry in terms of being zeroed out, as well as this change in wildland fire, really creates a shaky foundation for forest management in The US. And so I think that those of us that are working with state organizations are anticipating a future where going be more on our own. Hopefully that's not the case. I think Professor Chittenden talked about funding could be reinstated. There will still be major losses at institutions, data, brains. But I think we're hoping that this is a temporary blip and either after the midterms or even into next administration things sort of take a more, I would say, reasonable track. Green Mountain National Forest did lose probationary staff in 2025, but a great team remains. We're helping them by hiring staff that can do forest management on their lands. We're grateful for that partnership we have with the Forest Service, and we're excited to implement all these US service funded forest management products. And so while I've been somewhat critical of the organization, we really believe in in the mandate and the mission of the US forest service, and we hope that we're able to weather this storm and come out the other side more or less intact and able to do all the great work that they do to steward our our nation's forest. I'll stop there. Thank you for the opportunity, Chair Durfee.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: One thing we haven't talked about, I don't know whether it fits into the topic really, but for Vermonters who drive by and see the Forest Service headquarters in Rutland Rochester. Rochester or Mendon. Rochester. Yeah. Is staffing at those been affected at all?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Ineffective, but the lights are

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: still on. There's still people working there. As I said, they lost probationary staff. The numbers were not significant. They weren't huge in 2025. So they've weathered the storm pretty well, and there's still plenty of hardworking staff doing great work. And I'd encourage those reminders to pop in and say hello and ask questions and get to know the people that are are stewarding those folks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Other questions, thoughts? Really helpful. Thank you for putting the work into the presentation.

[Oliver Pearson, Director, Division of Forests, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think it's a bit of a moving target. I'd be interested to come back in two years and give an update, see where things have gone between now and then. Great, thank you very much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, thank you. Thank you. Professor Keaton, thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much.