‘Telephone Gap’ logging project
Instead of allowing an irreplaceable New England forest ecosystem to be extensively logged, there remains time to permanently protect the area as a National Monument. This necessary Executive Action would serve as a culmination of the extensive years-long public process to protect vulnerable mature and old-growth federal forests.
The Telephone Gap project will commercially log nearly half of the existing old-growth in the Green Mountain National Forest, including cutting down 2,000 acres of a rare Inventoried Roadless Area, jeopardizing clean water and putting communities in Vermont at greater flood risk.
This misguided U.S. Forest Service project has repeatedly been flagged as one of the most egregious logging projects in the entire country by a coalition of national environmental organizations that includes the Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Standing Trees and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The former deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service recently wrote an op-ed explaining why protecting mature and old-growth forests in New England is so critical right now. You can read his article here.
Since 2021, there has been an energized grassroots moment — supported by Indigenous leaders, key members of Congress, the scientific community, the White House, and over one million citizens who submitted comments to the Forest Service — to safeguard the remaining mature and old-growth forests on U.S. public lands.
Renowned climate and forest scientists — including Jim Hansen, Michael Mann, and Dominick DellaSala — call on the White House to immediately halt the destruction of mature and old-growth forests in a letter, read here.
A National Monument designation that protects majestic groves of mature and old-growth forests in the Telephone Gap project area is a logical culmination of this extensive process, serving as a beacon of hope for future generations.
‘Telephone Gap’ landscape in the Green Mountain National Forest (photograph by John Geery)