Strategic Conservation Plan Adopted for Long Trail System Protection

This article appears in the 2024 Fall Long Trail News and was written by Mollie Flanigan, GMC’s Director of Land Conservation.

Thirty-seven years ago the Green Mountain Club undertook a monumental task – to protect the Long Trail by conserving the land around it, thus ensuring a permanent route and a protected scenic landscape.

Much has changed since 1986, but our commitment to that goal is steadfast. The Long Trail Protection Campaign has finished more than 100 trail protection projects, conserved more than 25,000 acres of land, and protected more than 78 miles of the Long Trail.

But even successful long-term efforts need periodic evaluation and assessment. In the land trust world, such reviews are called strategic conservation plans. They are used to update and hone conservation goals, to ensure organizations are working proactively to protect the values they aim to conserve. Though GMC is not primarily a land trust, our trail protection program closely resembles one, so the techniques land trusts use are an excellent model for us.

Developing a Strategic Conservation Plan

In 2021 we started developing the GMC Strategic Conservation Plan, led by staff members and guided by a working group of the Land Conservation Committee, as described in the summer 2022 Long Trail News. A recommitment to the Green Mountain Club’s bold vision for the Long Trail System, the plan was approved by the GMC Board in September 2023.

The planning effort analyzed the quality and effectiveness of our protection of the Long Trail System, and the criteria by which tracts of land were identified as conservation priorities. Now we can sharpen our focus on what body of conservation projects GMC should pursue in the future.

Mapping the Future of Long Trail Protection

In broad strokes, the plan outlines the need, goal, and approach to Long Trail System protection:

Need

Four percent of the Long Trail System remains unprotected:

• 6 miles of Long Trail treadway
• 0.2 miles of Long Trail/Appalachian Trail treadway
• 0.3 miles of Appalachian Trail treadway east of the LT
• 12.5 miles of side trail treadway
• 85 miles of Long Trail System corridor, meaning that 85 miles of the trail system do not have a full 1000-foot wide corridor of protected land surrounding the trail.

Goal

Long Trail System protection seeks to secure a permanent, legally protected route for the Long Trail System, primarily through the conservation of a predominantly natural, 1,000-foot-wide land corridor for public use.

Approach

Classify the unprotected parcels of land that host portions of the Long Trail System by priority:

• Tier 1: Legal protection of the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail treadways

Need: Twenty-three parcels host the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail treadway with no legal protection, including parcels for potential trail relocations.

• Tier 2: Legal protection of side trail treadways and trail infrastructure

Side Trail Treadways Need: Of the 84 side trails in the Long Trail System, 38 cross properties where they are not legally secured. Of those trails, GMC has assessed 25 as conservation priorities, crossing nine different properties.

Trail Infrastructure Need: Three Long Trail System shelters are on private land with no legal protection. GMC aims to protect one of them, and to replace the other two with new overnight sites on public land.

• Tier 3: Conservation of parcels within the 1,000-foot Long Trail System corridor

Need: 334 private parcels host a portion of the 1,000-foot trail corridor where there is no legal conservation of the land. The parcels range widely in size, location, topography, development status and perceived threat. To prioritize conservation targets, the club developed a ranking system that assigned the greatest value to parcels with significant length and area of trail corridor, a high perceived risk of potential development, natural vegetation, and the potential to be protected through a partnership project.

• Tier 4: Third-Party Lease or License Areas on Public Land
  Ski resorts have shared the Green Mountains with the Long Trail System for decades, and relations between the ski industry and the trail community have generally been cooperative. However, commercial use of Vermont’s mountains continues to grow and evolve, particularly as ski areas move towards four-season operation, so GMC should proactively work with each ski area to conserve the Long Trail System.

Need: The Long Trail System passes through or near nine downhill or cross-country ski areas, with some of the areas operating on multiple landownerships. Four ski areas that intersect the Long Trail System occupy private land. Two ski areas are on federal land, operating under special use permits from the U.S. Forest Service. Six ski areas are on state land, and operate according to conditions of long-term leases. Protections for the trail system through these leased or licensed areas should be enhanced by seeking binding agreements with ski areas on the nature and degree of future expansion that we could accept in the trail corridor.

Note: While all tiers are important, Tier 1 is the most critical, followed by Tiers 2 through 4. The system will guide allocation of resources, but tiers will be addressed concurrently to identify and develop opportunities for protection.

Implementing the Strategic Conservation Plan

Now our job is to effectively implement the conservation plan, using the workplan developed in conjunction with it. In the next four years, staff members and the Land Conservation Committee will systematically reach out to the landowners in each tier. We don’t know how many will be receptive and interested in conserving their property. Still, we must implement all elements of the plan as well as possible. This may require additional staff time and capacity.

In addition to establishing the priorities for projects, the plan provides criteria for quickly evaluating potential projects, including ones we may decide not to pursue. When a partner organization approaches GMC about a potential joint land protection project, the staff can use the plan to promptly and efficiently assess the proposal and provide accurate information and feedback, a process that would have taken weeks in the past.

We intend the strategic conservation plan to be a living and dynamic tool, so we will update it on a five-year cycle, starting in 2028.

Thanks to the past support of members and donors like you, we are 96 percent of the way to our ambitious goal of legal protection of the whole Long Trail System. Now we can concentrate on the last, most challenging four percent of the Long Trail, its side trails, and the land it traverses.