Forest activists look for reconsideration in Camel’s Hump logging case

October 26, 2023  |  By Alicia Wolfram  |  Community News Service

Camel's Hump view from Valley View Drive in Waterbury Center. Photo by Gordon Miller

Forest preservation activists are waiting to see whether their lawsuit to stop logging on about 3,760 acres on public lands around Camel’s Hump still has life.

Activist group Standing Trees and Duxbury residents Jamison Ervin and Alan Pierce asked Vermont Superior Court Judge Timothy Tomasi on Sept. 26 to reconsider his Sept. 1 dismissal of their November 2022 lawsuit against the state.

The lawsuit claims that officials violated public process laws regarding plans to start logging in the Camel’s Hump Management Unit, a stretch of about 26,000 acres in north-central Vermont that includes the popular mountain and state park. The lawsuit named the commissioners of the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

State officials announced in late 2021 that 34 commercial timber harvests were planned for the next 15 years, totalling about 3,764 acres.

Tomasi granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit because, among other reasons, no specific approval has yet been made for logging on each of the specified parcels.

The plaintiffs, represented by attorney James Dumont, filed a motion to reconsider and argued the cases the judge relied on in the dismissal did not apply. The injury in those cases was too remote and speculative to establish standing, according to the plaintiffs’ motion.

In this case, however, according to the 2022 complaint, the property owned by Ervin and Pierce “adjoins, is downhill and downstream of and enjoys views of Camel’s Hump State Park.”

Jamison Ervin serves as vice chair of the Duxbury Selectboard.

The complaint further alleges that the residents would therefore likely suffer injury to their property from the logging through flooding, for instance, and from loss of enjoyment of the land, which also constitutes injury under the law.

In the complaint, the plaintiffs say the state has been making decisions about land management for years without codifying procedures as formal rules — which would subject those policies to public comment and an extensive justification process involving an environmental impact assessment. Rules have the force of law, and they stay in effect unless they’re repealed or modified by another rule, limited or thrown away by a court or repealed or changed by a state law.

According to state law, the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation commissioner must adopt rules for timber harvesting on state forests or park lands.

An agency must begin the rulemaking process when petitioned by at least 25 people, and the plaintiffs say they followed that process when they asked state officials to establish formal rules about the planned logging — which they say has only been governed by the agency’s internal practices.

However, according to the plaintiffs, state officials “chose not to initiate the promulgation process and its concomitant environmental review, thereby depriving Dr. Ervin and Dr. Pierce of the ability to participate in the environmental review/public comment process that could result in rules that protect them against harm.”

In a November 2022 letter to Dumont, Michael Snyder, former commissioner of the forests and parks department, said officials agreed “it is appropriate to develop rules regarding the land management planning process,” but denied the Dumont’s request because officials want to develop a “comprehensive land managing planning process rule” rather than only convert specific procedures into rules.

Snyder agreed to initiate the process of making that rule, according to the letter, but said it wouldn’t change previously adopted plans. The current commissioner, Danielle Fitzko, told Community News Service that the department is currently in the early stages of rulemaking.

“Early winter is our goal to actually go through the public involvement process,” she said.

Standing Trees Executive Director Zack Porter said the public involvement process is what the lawsuit is all about.

“We’re continuing with our litigation to ensure that (process) happens in a timely manner and to ensure that we have rules in place that will guide the actual logging that is proposed on the ground in Camel’s Hump State Park,” Porter said.

Fitzko also said that the public did weigh in on the identification of the 34 parcels of proposed logging land. This process, she said, is part of the 2021 plan for the Camel’s Hump area, the Long Range Management Plan.

“Once the Long Range Management Plan is signed, that gives us the authority to move forward and implement those logging, forest management projects,” said Fitzko. “So they’ve already been approved, and now our professional staff go in there and do the assessments and prescriptions on those harvests.”

A spokesperson from the Department of Fish and Wildlife declined to comment, citing the litigation’s pending status.

“It’s just a completely opaque process,” Porter said, “and that’s why we are challenging the state’s management — because the public has been kept in the dark on how these special places are being managed.”

He added that the state manages public lands on the public’s behalf, and “right now, the degree to which these are decisions hidden from public view is just not appropriate for public land management.”

Fitzko defended her department’s actions. “It is the direction of the state to manage our state lands, and one of those authorities includes forest management and timber harvesting,” Fitzko said, “and so we're acting within the guidelines of state law.”

Porter said it could be weeks if not months before another decision. In the meantime, he said, logging could begin in the near future.

University of Vermont students in the Community News Service program work with professional editors to provide reporting for local news outlets at no cost.