Group moves to change forest reserve deal

MONTPELIER, Vt. – A group formed to oppose the terms of the Champion lands management agreement is hoping the change to a Republican administration this month will help its cause.

The Vermont Traditions Coalition called Thursday for Gov.-elect James Douglas to rescind an executive order signed by Gov. Howard Dean on the Champion lands deal.

The order, signed Nov. 1, “appears to be an effort by an outgoing governor to reduce the responsibility of an incoming governor to manage the Champion lands,” said Steve McLeod, executive director of the coalition.

McLeod said the order, which gives the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife responsibility for managing the state’s portion of the huge Northeast Kingdom parcel, authorizes road closures sought by the Dean administration and fails to modify management of a 12,500-acre ecological reserve established as part of the agreement.

The state helped broker the purchase of 133,000 acres in the Northeast Kingdom owned by Champion International Inc. in 1999. About 84,000 acres of the land then was transferred to a private timber company, 26,000 acres went to the federal government and the remaining 22,000 acres was taken over by the state.

Easements written into the land’s deeds maintained it as open to public use for recreation, hunting and some logging. People with hunting camps were given new leases that enabled their families to keep them for 20 years beyond the primary owner’s life.

The core area was contentious because the state had proposed to restrict access. In the final agreement, pedestrian access and hunting, fishing, trapping, skiing and other traditional uses were allowed there, and the area includes a snowmobile corridor.

But the Vermont Traditions Coalition believes restricting timber harvesting there will reduce the habitat favored by species such as white-tailed deer, a favorite target of hunters.

“If you’re going to deny any cutting on that land, you’re going to deny habitat for that wildlife, so there’s going to be less and less wildlife all the time,” said Craig Lefevre, a retired principal and coalition member.

Thursday, they also took issue with the decision on the camps, saying camp owners should be able to pass their camps down to others, and that preventing them from doing so would destroy a culture that has grown up around them.

The Dean executive order had the approval of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs – Vermont’s largest and oldest sportsmen’s organization – and the National Rifle Association.

Thursday, those groups affirmed their support.

“We feel the executive order safeguards the rights of hunters and sportsmen,” said Kelly Whitley, an NRA spokeswoman in Fairfax, Va. The NRA “believes that this should end the Champion lands matter as a political issue.”

Bill Leipold, executive director of the Vermont Federation said Thursday the order “guarantees public access for hunting, fishing, trapping and a bunch of other activities on the entire property.” He added he had agreed with Dean not to bring the matter up again.

But for McLeod and others, the issue is not over.

Rep. David Brown, a Republican from Walden, said he might introduce legislation that would bring the matter up again.

McLeod wants Douglas to sign a new executive order, this one mandating that all the roads stay open.

Douglas said Thursday that he will review all of the executive orders signed by Dean, and will give consideration to the group’s request.

Dean said Thursday that the executive order was a compromise between almost all of the interested parties and said he would be surprised to see Douglas rescind it.

“It would be unusual to undo a compromise that had been forged by the mainstream sportsmen, hunting, trapping and fishing organizations in the state,” Dean said.

He said McLeod’s group “were the people who stirred up all the trouble the last time, in the Legislature.

“Jim [Douglas] is going to have trouble with the right wing, just the way I had trouble with the left wing,” Dean said. “You always get pushed by the extreme ends of your own party.”