Op-Ed: Public Lands Demand Public Accountability

June 6, 2026  |  By Jamison Ervin

For the first time ever, Vermonters have an opportunity to establish formal rules governing how our public lands are managed. This may sound like an obscure bureaucratic exercise. It is anything but.

The forests, mountains, streams, and habitats managed by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources belong to all Vermonters. They are our shared inheritance. Yet since its establishment, the agency has made decisions affecting these lands based primarily on internal and opaque policies and procedures, rather than on formal rules adopted through a public process that provide guidance on how such decisions are made.

That is now changing.

ANR has initiated rulemaking for state land management planning. This is a welcome and important step, one that I, along with my husband and the organization Standing Trees called for when we sued the state of Vermont in 2022 to promulgate such rules. The question before us is no longer whether Vermont should have rules. The question now is whether those rules will provide meaningful public accountability.

Public lands are different from private lands. They belong to all Vermonters, not only to those of us living today, but also to future generations. Decisions about their management should therefore be transparent, informed by rigorous science, and subject to meaningful public participation.

This matters because Vermont's public lands do much more than provide places to hike, hunt, fish, and recreate. Vermont’s forests store carbon, safeguard drinking water, provide habitat and connectivity for wide-ranging species such as black bear, lynx, moose, marten, bobcats, and several endangered bats. 

And because most state lands are located in headwater areas, they play an essential role in reducing flood risks for communities downstream. Importantly, all of these forest functions increase in value as forests grow older. 

The flood mitigation potential of our state lands is especially critical as we consider the strong likelihood of increased frequency and intensity of rain events. Duxbury, where I served four years on the town selectboard and seven on the planning commission, has seen three flooding-related FEMA events in just the past six years. The devastating floods that Vermont has experienced in recent years remind us that forests are not simply scenic backdrops. They are part of our natural infrastructure for public safety. The way ANR manages our public lands has consequences for communities, roads, bridges, water quality, and public safety for many decades and generations to come.

Good rulemaking should reflect these realities. It should ensure that Vermonters are informed about management actions affecting public lands. It should provide meaningful opportunities for public review and comment. It should require transparency regarding the information and analyses used to make decisions. And it should explicitly incorporate climate resilience, biodiversity protection, flood mitigation, clean water provisioning, and other public values into management planning.

Reasonable people will continue to disagree about specific forest management approaches, and that is part of a vibrant democracy. What should not be controversial, however, is the principle that public lands deserve public accountability.

The current rulemaking process offers a rare opportunity to establish a modern, transparent, accountable framework for managing Vermont's public lands, one that reflects both the challenges of the twenty-first century and the values of Vermonters.

I encourage readers to learn about the proposed rule, participate in the public comment process, and make their voices heard. I also encourage the Agency of Natural Resources to recognize that 21st-century challenges require 21st-century governance.

These lands belong to all Vermonters. The rules governing them should, too.

Jamison Ervin lives in Duxbury. She has over three decades of experience working in international park management, forest conservation and climate change, and three decades serving on local boards, commissions and land trusts.  

More information about the Agency of Natural Resources rulemaking process open for comment through June 18 is online here. After holding several in-person meetings around the state as part of this process, the agency will hold an online session for comments and questions on June 11. Read more here.