Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jamison Irvin]: You so much for the opportunity. I'm Jamison Irvin from Duxbury, Vermont, and I'm going to share my perspectives from a local perspective and a global perspective. So I have served on the Duxbury Select Board for four years, the Duxbury Planning Commission for seven years, the Duxbury Land Trust for nine years, Waterbury Local Energy Action Partnership for eight years, and the cross boundary conservation collaboration initiatives for another four. So, yes, I have thirty years of local conservation experience. I think h two seventy six is a fabulous idea, and I wanna tell you why in three reasons. The first is that it reduces the risks of flooding. 90% of Vermont's state managed lands are enforced at headwaters. 90%. This is where the bulk of them are. These are according to a study that Agency of Natural Resources itself conducted, These are extremely important areas for flood protection, flood resilience. These help mitigate floods. They slow the water down. The intact soils absorb the water. Most logging plans and pub on on public lands would need to be, according to the report itself, significantly modified or reduced to meet the recommendations to reduce the risk of flooding. I don't know if I need to remind people that flooding is expected to cost Vermonters 5,200,000,000.0 at least. This was a report that came out in 2022 before the recent FEMA events. You I won't say you could add another zero, but you could certainly double that. I don't know if this let's see if this will work. This is just a a little video here. Two second. This is my neighbor's house during Irene. Next. There we go. So this is just his house. This is a beautiful little brook, Ridley Brook, that ran through his yard, ran through his house. Duxbury itself was a major disaster site. More practically, this was two years ago. This is 2024, FEMA flooding event. This is River Road in Duxbury. This is what we have to contend with on an every other year basis now. So we are, as a select board, really plagued by flooding events. In this context, the plans for logging are, frankly, absurd. So I show you here the state of Vermont. I show you the camel's hump management long range plan, and I show you the third stream, which is the logging plans slated for this area, 3,750 acres in these really important areas for flood control. These areas are next to roads. They're on steep areas. They are super critical for flood resilience. Duxbury has already had three FEMA events in five years. Our roads still have not recovered from Irene. We did a needs assessment based on Camel Sump Road, where we have thousands of visitors, thousands coming up to climb Camel Sump. Logging exacerbates risks. We're looking at a $4,000,000 project just to repair Camel's Hump Road still. We just completed a Scrabble Hill slide repair that was $750,000. So road damage from flooding is extreme. And we're a small town. We're 1,200 people serving on I joined the Select Board four years ago because roads were something not my passion, not my knowledge, but they're super critical. And the reason I'm leaving the Select Board, the reason I'm not running, is because I can't deal with the FEMA needs of road catastrophes and do my full time work. It's a full time job. And you see this across the state. Volunteer boards simply can't keep up with FEMA emergencies. And we know that FEMA itself is under question. Number two, h two seventy six reduces taxpayer burden. What do I mean? A couple of things. Logging in Kamsarm State Park, as an example, in my backyard, will add what I call the 500,000,000 pound gorilla in the room. One logging truck weighs about a 100,000 pounds. We're looking at every acre being about 1.5 truckloads. So we're looking at 5,000 truckloads in one park of logs. 5,000 truckloads weighing 500,000,000 pounds over the course of fifteen years. So you can see the erosion that we're facing. These are from Duck Spray in the last two years. We have culvert washouts. But also, we have failing bridges and infrastructure. So you can go to the state site, look up Vermont Bridge 39 in Duxbury. You can say it says should be replaced as soon as possible. This logging truck just crossed it. You can see the cracks in the abutment. You can see the sagging road. You can see the rebar showing. You can see the cement breaking apart. Imagine hundreds, if not thousands of logging trucks going over this road. Who pays this burden? We as a town do. We as a state do. And town across town across. This is why H 276 will avoid this problem. The third is a little bit difficult to articulate without more data. Through a public records act, I looked at as many of the logging specs as I could. Where are the logs going? Well, frankly, they're going to Quebec. So the economic costs of logging far exceed the benefits to Vermonters and to ANR. It does not make economic sense to bring the kind of wood that they're bringing out, to build the kind of roads that they're building, which frankly are better than any of our town roads, and make a profit. A huge portion of logs go directly to Quebec for processing in the form of pulp and chips and firewood. These are low valued products. Is this good for for Vermont? I don't I don't think so. But I also wanna share my perspective from a global perspective. What do I mean by this? For the better part of thirty years, I have worked for the United Nations Development Programme. I'm into my eighteenth year. I've worked for the Nature Conservancy at a global level for a World Wildlife Fund. I was the first person the Forest Stewardship Council hired to set up standards of responsible logging worldwide. It's now responsible for one out of every five log that's harvested. And I'm not going to tell you how many years it took for me to do my PhD from UVM in land use planning. I'll just say it's an embarrassingly long time. So, yes, I have thirty years of professional experience. What have I done? What do I have to show for myself for that experience? Basically, what I work with governments all around the world I've worked with more than a 100 governments directly, is to help them assess the effectiveness with their park systems, with their park design, help identify intact habitat, wildlife corridors, spatial linkages between nature, areas important for nature, and climate sequestration, identifying areas important to restore for nature in order to achieve national goals and not just biodiversity burdens, jobs, water security, livelihoods, protecting forests for water security, disaster risk reduction like floods, and assessing government policies. In my thirty years involved with hundreds of assessments with more than a 100 governments, success boils down to one thing, and it's probably not what you're thinking. It's not resources. It's not capacity. It sort of is political will, but it's something even more foundational. It's policy alignment. If you imagine two people in a rowboat and one person's rowing this way and the other person's back rowing, you're going nowhere. And perhaps even worse, you've got one person facing forward, one person facing the other way, and you're going in circles. It's only when you align your policies that you move forward toward the ambitious goals. I've never been prouder to be a Vermonter in the last couple of years, and I can say with authority that we are setting a global standard with our policies that we've adopted, with the laws that we've adopted. When you look at other countries around the world, and believe me, I work with many of them, the 30 by 30 law that we passed and the fiftyfifty inclusion, that is far none in the top 5% of countries in terms of ambition. The climate commitment that we've made is outstanding. We face a global and a local biodiversity plant and climate crisis, which you've heard many testimonies about. But we're, I believe, at a crossroads for Vermont. We are not in policy alignment. We have, on the one hand, an agency that is cutting forests that will exacerbate flood risk, that will exacerbate our tax burden, and will increase risks to the monitors. This is a before and after shot. This is before and after Marshall Road in Duxbury. These are older trees. They're not old growth, as you might think. They're not huge ones where you go and you feel this kind emotional, but they will be, would be, would have been had we let them grow old. So policy alignment is really important. And by that, I mean, h two seven six will prevent habitat fragmentation, protect intact habitat, and ensure ecologically functional landscapes. It will do that. It will align our agencies and our policies to achieve that result. It will advance our climate goals in Vermont with h six eighty eight. Vermont's forests offset 42% of our emissions and could offset 2.3 to four two 4.2% times more if they're just allowed to grow old. Every time we cut them, we set back the plot. H two seventy six will protect endangered species. And here I'm speaking specifically of the lovely northern long eared bat whose habitat was just locked. So do with that what we will. We are contributing to extinction in this state with our reckless absence of policy alignment. And finally, h two seven six is the primary instrument for ensuring success of Vermont conservation by design conservation design and act 59. In the absence of any other policy instrument, where are we going to put those 9%, 10% old forests? Private lands change hands on average every seven years. People wanna, you know, hit the bat 40 to pay for college, to pay for a new house, whatever they need to. Public lands are the only instrument that will safeguard these. I just want to conclude, I won't have a drone on, but I've chosen these three examples for a purpose, these three reasons. You're going to hear many stories from others. You're going to hear stories about why young forests are so important. Yes, young forests are important for some habitat, for some species. Should the state lands be the home for all the young forests? No. There are plenty of young forests. I saw six logging trucks on the way here. There's an active logging site going on in Duxbury that has about 200 acres in different patches. There is logging going on all over the state, and that is contributing to young forest. And that's part of a healthy matrix. But there are no other areas for old forest to persist. You're going to hear something like beyond the illusion of forest that Vermont has a responsibility to produce its own wood. Yes, we do. We're producing 50% more than we consume. We're producing and we're sending it off to Quebec to be chipped. We're producing or burning it in Burlington, which creates more emissions than fossil fuels. You're gonna hear stories about climate resilience. I'm sure you heard from Danielle Fitzgow, commissioner Fitzgow, saying, we need climate resilience, and we need climate resilient products. Well, shipping and shipping our forests out of the country and shipping them to Asia, it's not really climate. Is that really climate resilient? I think we really need to ask ourselves, are we in alignment with our big goals? The reality is that this is uncomfortable. Uncomfortable train because we are a state that has had a deep and long and prideful history of logging, and rightfully so. But public lands has a new role because we're in a different time. So I could have chosen any other number of reasons. I could have talked about ticks and how logging increased ticks, and this is a deeply personal issue. My sister-in-law was bitten by a tick, has fluorescent, and has lost all of her short term memory. Ticks will increase with logging. Invasive species, as Rick mentioned, will increase with logging. What happens? You lose the functional integrity of a forest when you start to have invasive species. I could have talked about water security. I think this is something we don't think about. Vermont is wet. It's wet it's wet all the time until the summer, driest summer in decades, if record. And then we start to think about fire. And the logging increases the risk of fire. H two seven six is great for water security. We think about I don't even I won't even start about rulemaking and the agency of natural resources dragging its heels on that, but that is something else so that this will obviate the need for rulemaking. This will be the rule. I I just wanna close. So h two seven six reduces flood risk. This is critical for communities across Vermont and including my own. It is good business. It reduces the tax burden. I think what happens is that we get into this tautological argument of we need foresters so we can log, and we need to log so we can pay the foresters. Well, actually, we think a little bit differently about what we do with our public lands. And we need policy alignment. If we're serious if we're serious about achieving our goals, these amazing goals globally, then we need to align our policies. And h two seven six is the fastest way to do that. Because the moment that we're in of extended drought, unpredictable floods, FEMA irregularities, we don't know if there's gonna be a FEMA. I don't know about you, I'm you know, that's why I'm leaving the sec board is I don't know what FEMA's situation is gonna be like. The tax environment for Vermonters and what we're subsidizing and the nature climate crisis. For those reasons, I think that H. Two seventy six is really important. I hope you do too. Thank you for your time. Questions?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Questions for the presenter.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Boston. We've heard really conflicting testimony about the use of old growth for response storing carbon sequestration. We encourage conflicting data or testimony about young forest growth and old forest growth. I'm just trying to figure out whose data, how to figure out whose data is correct. I learned

[Jamison Irvin]: a great word this morning. If you follow Anogarh, he said the word was, And this is producing agnostic material that's designed to create doubt. So it's like both sides of the coin or science is not settled. The science is absolutely settled on this. Young forests do sequester carbon faster. Old forests sequester more carbon. So if someone tells you, Oh, young forests are the greatest sequestering carbon, that's one part of the equation. But the question you want to ask is, what about old forests? They are a monster at sequestering carbon. And some of the data from Keaton, Doctor. Keaton at University of Vermont says that if we just let forest grow old that we have now, they could sequester between 2.3 to 4.2 times more carbon than they're sequestering. Every time you knock it back to a young forest or an early successional stage, you're knocking back the carbon sequestration value.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Sir? I have a question for you. Two of those slides shows outdoor trees on the left and a slash forest on the right. Was any of that land owned by the town of Dugsburg?

[Jamison Irvin]: No. This is public lands. This is Camelstomp State Park.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: State lands?

[Jamison Irvin]: This is state lands. This happened this summer. This is Marshall Road.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That state land is supposed to be managed by state foresters. Correct? Yes. And they allowed that looks like about a 10 acre cut there, maybe smaller. Yes.

[Jamison Irvin]: Do it about Yeah. It's a big cut, and they they're going back right now as we speak. They're there right now to expand it.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, frozen ground. I can understand that. That land, if the foresters were on the ball, that's a prescribed cut. Did they take it? Then that land is within the town of Dudsburg. Did they go to the select board and say, prescribed cut was two two what?

[Jamison Irvin]: You know, this is part of the frustration of serving on a select board is that there's really very little you can do. So they said, we're going to be logging, and we'll post the roads. They did have logging violations. We called them out on that, pass passing school bus, for example. A select board does not have jurisdiction on state lands. This is state owned.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Correct.

[Jamison Irvin]: So, the best we can do is say, By the way, we're picking up the tab for these bridges and roads. There's almost nothing as a select board that you can do. It's not our jurisdiction. In my personal capacity, again, very little one can do. But this is state owned land. This is the first of You can see all of the cuts happening planned.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: All of those cuts are on state owned land?

[Jamison Irvin]: Yes. The green is Kamsarm State Park. Basically, they're cutting everything they can cut. This is the existing plant. And it's replicated in the Worcester Range, it's replicated across Vermont. So whatever they can cut, they are cutting. And these are the precise areas. You can see right above the roads, the precise areas important for flood control.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Sorry,

[Jamison Irvin]: What's that's the rationale for, I mean, does the town make money? Does the state make money? Is the cost worth the benefit? You just put your finger on the existential challenge that the Agency of Natural Resource has. Because in my mind and in my limited I'm not a forester. I don't play one in real life, and I don't I don't I'm not a forest economist. But I do know logging a little bit from my experience, and I do know a little bit about the economy. There is no economic benefit. And I think what's happening here is you have foresters who are on staff with the Agency of Natural Resources. I know I'm veering a little bit here from fact to opinion that they haven't met, sort of like a cobbler looks at shoes and the tire person looks at your tires on a car, a forestry is going be looking at the logs. We're sending pulp and chips to Quebec. That's what we're doing with those forests, those logs. That doesn't help our economy. I don't believe so. But that's my opinion. I don't have the economic data. What I can say is that certainly the town does not get any benefit. In fact, it's a net loss in terms of roads, the road damage, the bridge damage, the time, the FEMA, all of it.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Any other questions? If not, thank you very much for your testimony.

[Jamison Irvin]: My pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah. And any questions, feel