In late November, Tracey Forest heard loud grinding and beeping and raced down the road to find a fleet of logging trucks with giant claws and saws near where she runs Spirit Hollow, a silent retreat.

The loggers with machinery were traveling toward the Green Mountain National Forest, bordering Spirit Hollow. In the days that followed, the retreat programs were relocated after guests were upset by the sound of falling trees, according to Forest, her given name.

Forest said it was a “big shocker” to see the large number of felled trees, with only a few left standing in the clearings, littered with branches and debris. “To place such a giant, loud factory operation right at our border — it seems unconscionable to us,” Forest said.

The logging on Grass Mountain is part of a 15-year U.S. Forest Service plan called the Early Successional Habitat Creation Project to create young forests by allowing logging on over 14,000 acres on the southern portion of the Green Mountain National Forest. The idea behind the project, approved in 2019, is to help create forests with trees of different ages and promote habitat for wildlife, like songbirds. Notably, certain game birds benefit as well, some conservationists said.

In essence, the Early Successional Habitat project calls for sections of the Green Mountain National Forest to be logged using various forestry methods, including clearcutting in patches, and other types of logging that sometimes leave only a few trees behind. Such habitats look like shrubby clearings without a mature tree canopy, according to a report on the federal website.

The project rekindles an ongoing debate in Vermont between forest conservationists — who would let the forest grow wild — and loggers, foresters and state biologists who argue cutting down trees benefits the forest in the long run. Both believe their methods — rewilding or active forest management — improves the forest’s overall health. At stake is the future of Vermont’s forests, one of the state’s most prized natural resources and recreational assets.

Forestry practices and management are facing a broader deregulatory push on the federal level, including through the Fix our Forest Act currently before Congress that would streamline National Environmental Policy Act review of U.S. Forest Service logging projects as a wildfire prevention strategy, among other measures of the bill.

In the rollout of the Early Successional Habitat Creation Project, the Forest Service implemented a new approach in Vermont to its environmental review process known as “ Condition-Based Management.” The approach has faced legal challenges in other states and allows the Forest Service to change elements of a project after a decision, without getting public feedback on the changes.

Environmental activists and some lawyers worry use of the “condition-based” approach violates the cornerstone environmental review laws by limiting public input and allowing plans to morph after an initial decision.

Vermont lawyer Andrew Cliburn said the condition-based approach allows the possibility of circumventing “burdensome and lengthy environmental review” under the National Environmental Policy Act for the Forest Service, which is “under pressure to increase logging,” especially after the Trump administration’s call for a 25% increase in timber production. But, that’s the point: “Democracy slows things down on purpose,” he said.

The Forest Service maintains on its website that condition-based management “is a method to meet NEPA’s requirements, not to avoid or shortcut them.”

Ruffed Grouse Society and the silent retreat

Forest has run the Spirit Hollow silent retreat since 2000, offering guests “meditative soul work” in nature and in yurts on her 100 acre property. Forest offers nine months of programming for peri-menopausal women, “earth crafting,” which involves creating art from natural materials, wilderness immersions and “vision fasts,” which involve multi-day fasts in the wilderness, she said.

Once the logging trucks showed up adjacent to her property, Forest relocated her programs after fundraising in her community. She said she shouldn’t have been forced to rely on community support to stay in business.

“The bigger issue too is this kind of lack of transparency, difficulty to get information and the lack of communication,” Forest said. “We weren’t consulted, and if I didn’t have a generous community, it would literally put me out of business.”

On the other side of the divide on Grass Mountain is the Ruffed Grouse Society — a hunting and conservation group — which has joined hands with the U.S. Forest Service in an alliance to push forward projects that create early successional habitat. A ruffed grouse is a game bird found widely across North America, and is somewhat larger than a pigeon with long and shiny black and chocolate-colored neck feathers, according to the Ruffed Grouse Society website.

In 2019, the Ruffed Grouse Society entered an agreement with the Eastern and Southern regions of the Forest Service around the same time the decision notice for the Vermont Early Successional Habitat Project was issued. Under the pact, the Forest Service and Ruffed Grouse Society agreed to restore the “productivity of ruffed grouse habitats and woodcock on landscapes within the National Forest System,” according to the agreement with the Forest Service.

Amelia Napper, who works as the Vermont public lands forester for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society in conjunction with the Forest Service, said the concerns at Spirit Hollow amount to a “short-term pain.” Napper said she expects that once the timber sale is completed, Grass Mountain residents will be delighted by the “sounds of birds that they’re hearing, and see the beauty that comes on to the landscape.”

The logging on Grass Mountain involves roughly 110 acres in the Manchester Ranger District, or southern half of the Green Mountain National Forest. The logs cut through the Grass Mountain timber sale will be sold to a Vermont-based logger and proceeds from the sale will pay for tree planting and stream restoration on the land after the timber harvest, Napper said. Early this year, logging on Grass Mountain ended for the season but will resume in the summer, according to Napper.

Zack Porter, executive director of a public and state lands protection advocacy organization Standing Trees, said the Early Successional Habitat Creation Project is “bearing down on some incredibly important landscapes and destroying the livelihoods of Vermonters as at Spirit Hollow, and so the ramifications are immediate.”

Porter also criticized the Forest Service’s partnership with the Ruffed Grouse Society, saying the bird gaming and conservation organizations are “heavily embedded with the Forest Service and with state agencies around the eastern U.S., trying to increase logging on public lands for hunting.”

Ethan Ready, public affairs officer for the Forest Service, wrote that the agency has many conservation partnerships, including with the Ruffed Grouse Society, which all follow “applicable laws and policies” and do not supplant the federal agency’s work.

“Early successional habitat — young forest after regeneration — provides important food and cover for many species and supports pollinators,” Ready wrote in an email response to questions from VTDigger.

Karl Malcolm, vice president of conservation at the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, said he feels “common ground” with Forest and the Spirit Hollow community because “they obviously cherish that landscape.”

Picking Winners and Losers

In the late 1800s, much of Vermont was cleared for agricultural use. Napper said that left many unhealthy trees to grow up in a homogenous, 80-year-old forest at Grass Mountain. To create young forests, Napper said the foresters leave a small number of healthy trees in clearings. The trees allowed to stand have a high value as a seed source to help regenerate future generations of trees. The strategy also helps neotropical migratory birds like warblers and tanagers, she said.

Alexandra Kosiba, University of Vermont forest ecophysiologist and assistant professor of forestry, said Vermont’s forests have not experienced a lot of natural disturbances such as trees dying from windstorms or insect outbreaks. Efforts to create young forests aim to emulate natural disturbances, accelerating the development of more complex, resilient forests as well as harvesting wood products, she said.

So-called early successional habitat formation is not new to other states: The Forest Service has implemented over 20 similar projects across more than 370,000 acres of national forest land from Maine to Michigan.

In the first six years of the plan, there have been seven timber sales across more than 1,600 acres in Vermont such as Southfork in Sunderland and Weston Priory in Weston, according to Ready. The total acreage cut on the 14,000 acre swath of forest included in the project will be less than the maximum allowed, due to limited capacity and the pace of environmental review, Ready wrote in an email.

Other sections of forest in Rutland and Bennington Counties have had patches clearcut, along with other methods, according to project maps and documents. Another timber sale called White Hill is expected to be awarded this year, Ready wrote, and there are six more timber harvests planned in coming years.

Some conservationists are critical of the approach. John Terborgh, a professor of environmental science at Duke University and a conservation biologist, agreed game birds like ruffed grouse benefit but said there are scores of species that would benefit if public lands were spared from logging and road building. Terborgh said it comes down to whether you value the forests as working lands or as a hub for diverse flora and fauna.

“My sympathies are wholly with nature and not with the destruction of nature,” Terborgh said. He added that he believes logging projects can “do great damage to the rest of the biodiversity.”

Michael Kellett, executive director of the wildlife conservation group Restore: The North Woods, said there are rare, threatened and endangered species that will not benefit from cutting for early successional habitat, unlike the ruffed grouse, which can be found across the state. “It’s just picking winners and losers,” Kellett said. “The losers are the wildlife that like big trees and interior natural forests. The winners are a few species that don’t need help.”

Spirit Hollow silenced

Forest, a Bennington County resident, says she did not see the public notice about the 15-year project in the Rutland Herald in 2019, nor the comment period held for the Grass Mountain timber sale in 2023. She said she only found out about the project after she ran into foresters near her property in 2024. They told her she would be placed on a public notice list, she said, but she didn’t receive notice for the 2025 comment period. Forest said she only found out the operation was starting on the day the machinery arrived.

By the time the logging started, the federal agency and loggers could not accommodate Spirit Hollow’s calendar or reimburse costs for relocating because the three-year federal contract with designated costs had already been finalized, Napper said.

Other state organizations have objected to the Forest Service curtailing public comment, including the Vermont Natural Resources Council and Vermont Audubon, both of which formally objected to the project, in part due to the Forest Service’s use of the “condition-based management” approach, which limited public engagement.

Vice President of Vermont Audubon Jamey Fidel, who worked for the Vermont Natural Resource Council at the time of the objection, said the organizations have generally seen the value of creating young forests for bird species, which may require some clearcutting. But Fidel said it’s important to identify and mitigate public concerns about these projects.

Fidel said the condition-based management process allows changes to projects as they roll out without public input if unexpected challenges arise. This differs from the typical practice of disclosing the cumulative effect on humans, wildlife and the environment, and allowing the public to make comments on specific impacts, according to the objection.

After an environmental assessment of the project, the U.S. Forest Service issued a Finding of No Significant Impact, which waived the need for further review, meaning “all required steps, including public involvement and environmental analysis, were completed,” wrote Ready.

The two organizations were also alarmed by the proposed 75 miles of road construction, which was not consistent with the federal 2006 forest plan.

After the organizations persistently lodged concerns, Ready wrote that the Forest Service collected additional information and scaled back construction to 25 miles of temporary roads for the project, removing some logging areas as a result.

This means lands used for temporary roads can “recover, re-vegetate and be monitored and wouldn’t have the lasting impact of new permanent roads,” Fidel said.

The Forest Service assured the groups that condition-based management would not be used on the Green Mountain National Forest in the future, Fidel said.

“That was very important to secure an assurance from the Forest Service that this would not be the continuing practice moving forward,” Fidel said. “We felt like that was an important aspect of maintaining public engagement.”