More than meets the eye

Standing atop Burnt Mountain, a great arc of the northern Green Mountains embraces you in soft-shouldered beauty stretching from horizon to horizon. Up close, the vivid colors of the fall foliage surround you. This is big, wild country, and you are standing within the largest privately conserved, forever-wild preserve in the state of Vermont.

The nearly 5,500-acre Burnt Mountain forever-wild easement is one of the most significant conservation achievements in Vermont of the past decade. Jointly purchased by The Nature Conservancy* in Vermont and Vermont Land Trust* in 1997, the Conservancy purchased VLT’s stake in the property in 2018, and then in early 2019 donated a forever-wild easement on the property to Northeast Wilderness Trust.*

While large, wild forests like those on Burnt Mountain provide habitat and clean air and water, they also play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change. Protecting this area as forever-wild will give wildlife space to move and adapt to changes caused by climate change. And left alone the trees will grow old and store carbon—providing great benefit to both nature and people.

The Nature Conservancy intends to enroll Burnt Mountain in California’s regulatory compliance market, making it Vermont’s largest carbon storage project (and the first to be eligible).

“Forests are the big ecosystems here in Vermont,” says Jim Shallow, director of conservation with the Conservancy. “People say we’ll develop a technology to remove carbon. Well, we’ve got that technology; it’s called a tree.”

*Accredited

Jon Leibowitz is executive director of Northeast Wilderness Trust.