This pathway identifies investments and programmatic opportunities to expand and improve equitable access to conserved lands, land-based enterprises and recreational opportunities.
Vision: This pathway supports Act 59’s vision of an ecologically functional landscape that supports Vermont’s communities and livelihoods by ensuring all people can directly benefit from conserved lands and land-based enterprises. Equitable conservation builds long-term public support and strengthens stewardship. By making access to conserved lands, land-based enterprises and conservation decision making more equitable, we will build the durable public support needed to sustain the Act’s vision over time.
Goals: This pathway directly contributes to the 2030 and 2050 conservation goals by emphasizing Act 59’s planning mandate that a growing share of conservation investments directly benefit underrepresented communities. This includes ensuring conserved farmland is affordable for new and beginning farmers, advancing more community forests and community-governed open spaces, and supporting other projects that expand durable access, tenure, and use for marginalized Vermonters while maintaining meaningful public access for hunting, fishing, foraging and other recreation as more private lands become posted. Because Act 59 is a long-term, statewide project, equitable access is foundational: it builds durable public support that makes sustained progress possible across all of the Act’s goals, including biodiversity and climate resilience.
Equity Considerations: This pathway is focused on addressing longstanding inequities in who owns, accesses, and benefits from land and conservation programs. It recognizes that land and land use decisions are largely defined by market conditions that, without intervention, can extract wealth and consolidate it in fewer hands. Public investments in conservation must consider the economic and related factors that perpetuate inequitable access to land. It centers Vermonters who have been historically marginalized or excluded from land ownership and decision-making—including BIPOC and Indigenous communities, low-income residents, immigrants and refugees, and young or otherwise undercapitalized farmers and foresters, and others facing barriers to land access and participation. By embedding equity criteria in funding, co-designing tools with affected communities, and supporting alternative tenure and ownership models, this pathway aims to close gaps in land access and ensure that Act 59 implementation does not reinforce or exacerbate existing disparities.
This pathway will be coordinated with and build upon existing efforts to advance equity in land access and conservation, including the work of the Land Access and Opportunity Board (LAOB), and Vermont’s Environmental Justice Office, Food Security Roadmap, Climate Action Plan, and Vermont Agriculture & Food System Plan.
Pathway 1 Action 1: Increase Equitable Access to Protected and Conserved Land and Land-Based Enterprises. These actions will ensure that the benefits of land conservation – including opportunities to own or manage land – are accessible to groups historically marginalized from land ownership. This includes BIPOC Vermonters, low-income residents, immigrants and refugees, and young or beginning farmers and forest landowners.
Pathway 1 Action 2: Center Equity in Conservation Decisions and Funding. Center Equity in Conservation Decisions and Funding. Ensure that Vermont’s conservation efforts are guided by a clear understanding of who benefits, who has historically been left out or burdened, and what communities need, so that access to planning, decision-making, and the benefits of land conservation are more equitably distributed.
Equity and community-based organizations; land trusts and conservation organizations; municipalities and conservation commissions; agricultural and working-lands organizations; mission-driven and community lenders; philanthropic funders; and relevant state agencies and quasi-public entities.
Vision: This pathway will help sustain biodiversity, maintain landscape connectivity, support working farms and forests and watershed health, promote climate resilience, and support Vermont’s historic pattern of compact settlements surrounded by rural lands and natural areas. By protecting public and private land for active agricultural and forest use, enhancing working-lands enterprise viability, and expanding technical assistance and resources for landowners, this pathway will strengthen protection of waterways, wetlands, special natural communities, and forest areas that connect to and support receiving waters and large forest blocks.
Goals: This pathway directly supports the Act 59 conservation goals by expanding the permanent protection of working forests and agricultural land. In addition, this pathway indirectly supports conservation and connectivity goals by slowing the loss and fragmentation of working forests and agricultural land. Keeping working lands economically viable and in the hands of conservation-minded forest landowners and farmers furthers important ecological values and working land outcomes while simultaneously strengthening the pipeline of high-quality conservation opportunities.
Equity Considerations: This pathway includes actions that support land access and secure tenure for new, beginning, and historically underserved farmers and forest landowners. These investments promote equitable outcomes while strengthening forest and community-scale food economies. Facilitating equitable access to working lands is essential for durable public support and for meeting Act 59’s goals in ways that reflect the needs and priorities of Vermont communities.
This pathway builds on and coordinates with existing initiatives such as the Vermont Agriculture & Food System Plan / Farm to Plate Network, the Food Security Roadmap, the Vermont Forest Future Strategic Roadmap, the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative, and the Use Value Appraisal (Current Use) program for farms and forests. It also intersects with state and federal conservation programs (e.g., NRCS easement and cost-share programs, Clean Water funding through AAFM and DEC), regional and municipal planning that directs growth to centers, and community-based land access and technical assistance efforts.
This pathway identifies strategies and investments to make Vermont’s conserved working lands more resilient, ecologically functional, and economically thriving, while continuing to invest in working lands conservation. It also addresses the economic and land use pressures that contribute to farmland loss and forest fragmentation by supporting the viability of farm and forest enterprises. In addition, this pathway emphasizes technical and financial supports that make ecologically beneficial land management practices viable for landowners.
Pathway 2 Action 1: Protect Working Forests and Strengthen the Forest Economy. Keep forests as forests by confronting the economic and land-use pressures that drive forest parcelization and fragmentation. The goal is to make owning and stewarding forestland economically rewarding and compatible with ecological health, so that private forests aren’t lost to development.
Pathway 2 Action 2: Keep Vermont’s Farmland Working. Expand the permanent protection of agricultural land to support the 2030 and 2050 goals, while addressing the broader factors that drive farmland loss to low-density development. This means pairing land protection and affordability tools with smart land use planning, infrastructure investments, equitable land access models, and farm viability support to keep farmland working, affordable, and accessible to current and future farmers.
Pathway 2 Action 3: Make Working Lands Models of Ecological Management and Innovation. Increase technical and financial support to help landowners manage farms and forests in ways that make their lands more climate resilient and ecologically sustainable – and share the lessons learned to improve best practices around the state.
Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, land trusts and conservation organizations; farm and forest viability and enterprise-planning providers; regional planning commissions and municipalities; mission-driven lenders who support rural enterprise; philanthropic foundations supporting working lands and food system initiatives; forest products businesses and industry associations; workforce and career-technical education providers; university/extension partners supporting forest economy and climate-resilient management; NRCS and conservation districts; and watershed and river organizations.
This pathway will identify conservation actions and investments to make Vermont’s communities and conserved lands more resilient in the face of climate change, promoting flood resilience, habitat connectivity, improved water quality and critical resource protection. Investments will protect lands where conservation helps to leverage restoration and enhancement of degraded wetlands, floodplains and riparian habitats, as well as protecting habitats and resources that are particularly important for mitigating the ongoing threats from climate change.
Vision: This pathway supports the conservation and restoration of floodplains and river corridors which will help maintain an ecologically functional landscape that sustains biodiversity, maintains landscape connectivity and supports watershed health. It will also better protect communities and their built infrastructure and downtowns. Likewise, the permanent protection and buffering of riparian corridors and wetlands on working lands will both support rural enterprise and reduce the impacts of agricultural and silvicultural land use on these aquatic resources.
Goals: This pathway will expand the network of conserved wetlands, riparian corridors, floodplains, headwaters and upland forests that contribute towards the Act’s 2030 and 2050 conservation goals. This will increase the acreage of lands protected under the ERA and BCA categories, as well as support the resilience of conserved lands in the NRMA category.
Equity Consideration: These resilience-focused investments protect all Vermonters, especially our most vulnerable neighbors, including those who depend on working lands for their livelihood and food, and all whose homes and jobs are threatened by climate change impacts, including flooding. It will be important to coordinate this work with community focused organizations and partners who work with vulnerable communities to align these investments with Vermont’s goals for environmental justice. Equity also requires coordination with local, state, and federal recovery and housing efforts to support voluntary relocation and replacement housing for households in flood-prone areas, so Vermonters can move out of harm’s way without losing economic ground.
This pathway will be coordinated with Vermont’s Climate Action Plan and Resilience Implementation Strategy, the Environmental Justice Program, as well as watershed-based and community led initiatives and planning, Tactical Basin Plans and Clean Water initiatives and Vermont Emergency Management. This pathway helps these initiatives succeed by directing land conservation and restoration dollars toward the wetlands, river corridors, floodplains, headwaters, and upland forests that are most important for reducing climate risk while also supporting biodiversity, working lands, and community well-being.
Pathway 3 Action 1: Protect and Restore Vermont’s Natural Resilience Infrastructure. Identify, protect and restore the natural areas that safeguard Vermont’s natural and human communities from climate impacts, including wetlands, riparian corridors, floodplains, headwaters and upland forests.
Pathway 3 Action 2: Support Implementation of the State’s Resilient Implementation Strategy (RIS) and Climate Action Plan. Ensure land conservation initiatives contribute to statewide climate adaptation goals and are tracked for effectiveness by implementing the following RIS actions. Lead Implementor(s): VHCB
State Agencies and quasi-public entities, conservation organizations, landowners and working-lands partners, Federal agencies, philanthropic foundations and mission-aligned lenders.
This pathway will promote diverse outdoor recreation opportunities through strategic investments in land protection that improve recreational access across user groups and demographics, while enhancing connection with nature and protecting ecological values.
Vision: This pathway supports opportunities for recreation and appreciation of the natural world. Such opportunities will promote public health and well-being, increase community resilience and strengthen public support for land conservation, stewardship and management.
Goals: Where permanent land conservation supports State and local community investments in outdoor recreation, this pathway will support new land protection and increased ecologically informed management. New acres protected will primarily fall under the Natural Resource Management Area (NRMA) forestland category, with additions to the Biodiversity Conservation Area (BCA) category when overlay protections for sensitive habitats are part of projects.
Equity Consideration: This pathway supports the Act 59 mandate to increase equitable access to protected and conserved lands, land-based enterprises and recreational access. Investments under this pathway should be evaluated to ensure that the environmental justice benefits of recreational access are available across user groups and demographics. It must also be acknowledged that much more work is needed to broaden participation to include underrepresented communities in the planning and implementation of projects that support access.
This pathway will enhance the State of Vermont’s current investments and commitments to the broad conservation mission implemented by the Secretary and VHCB, including conservation of agricultural lands, working forests, historic properties, recreational lands, and surface waters. Additionally, this pathway supports the goals of Move Forward Together VT (and the Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, the Vermont Forest Action Plan, and the Forest Futures Strategic Roadmap.
Pathway 4 Action 1: Support Implementation of Move Forward Together Vermont (Vermont’s Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan). Move Forward Together Vermont places equity and climate resilience as the common objectives across the work ahead to foster healthy and vibrant communities through outdoor recreation by focusing on three priority areas: stewardship, wellness and economic development.
VTGC, VOREC, private owners of forestlands and agricultural lands, land trusts, conservation organizations, environmental organizations, working lands enterprises, outdoor recreation groups and businesses, Indigenous groups and representatives from historically marginalized and disadvantaged communities, watershed groups, municipalities, regional planning commissions, conservation commissions, and relevant State and federal agencies.
This pathway identifies strategies and investments to expand place-based education and outreach efforts that connect residents with conserved lands by coordinating educational programs, expanding outdoor education opportunities and expanding the reach of conservation educational information.
Vision: This pathway supports opportunities for recreation and appreciation of the natural world. Such opportunities will promote public health and well-being, increase community resilience and strengthen public support for land conservation, stewardship and management.
Goals: This primary outcomes of the actions under this pathway will not directly support the quantitative goals for land conservation, but instead focus on fostering more public enjoyment of, engagement with, and appreciation for conserved lands, which will promote the shared understanding and authorizing environment needed for increased investments. It will also help build the capacity for conservation-focused stewardship and education.
Equity Consideration: This pathway recommends actions that will increase more equitable access to lands and to land-based enterprise. The actions under this pathway will create opportunities for shared planning among education stakeholders and the communities they serve.
Actions under this pathway will support landowners, community groups and conservation organizations by providing common understanding, and better access to data and resources, so that partners working on complementary initiatives can bring a full understanding of the benefits of land conservation to those initiatives.
Pathway 5 Action 1: Connect Schools and Communities to Conserved Lands, Technical Assistance and Training. Identify educational institutions, community groups, and municipal partners interested in working to strengthen programs and funding that integrate land conservation with educational and community spaces, especially focusing on town forests, school lands, and partnerships with higher educational institutions.
Pathway 5 Action 2: Enhance Outreach, Collaboration, and Information-Sharing. Create an information hub and promote events that help Vermonters learn about conservation opportunities, share best practices and lessons learned, and celebrate the importance of our natural and working lands.
Land trusts and conservation organizations, educational institutions, community groups, and municipal partners.