Vermonters should not be asked to surrender their individual liberty to protect the environment. For generations, they have been exceptional stewards of their land. Conservation policy should allow people to continue caring for the land they value so deeply, rather than replacing local stewardship with expanded government control.
Act 59, passed in 2023, established a goal of conserving 30% of Vermont’s land by 2030 and 50% by 2050. But roughly 80% of Vermont’s land is privately owned. Pursuing aggressive statewide conservation quotas in a state built on private landownership inevitably creates pressure for additional restrictions, expanded regulatory authority, and greater government influence over how Vermonters use their own property.
As Vermont implements Act 59’s statewide conservation mandates, rather than treating private landowners as obstacles to conservation goals, H.70 would help prevent unnecessary government overreach by recognizing the conservation value of land already enrolled in the Current Use program.
Current Use, formally known as the Use Value Appraisal program, allows farmland and forestland to be taxed according to its agricultural or forestry value rather than speculative development value, provided the land remains in active production and follows approved management plans. Today, more than 2.5 million acres across nearly 20,000 parcels are enrolled in the program.
For decades, Current Use has helped preserve Vermont’s forests, farms, wildlife habitat, and open spaces without permanently stripping landowners of flexibility or transferring control over working lands to centralized planners. Allowing land enrolled in Current Use to count toward Vermont’s broader conserved lands inventory under Act 59 would reflect the reality that these lands are already being responsibly managed and conserved. Excluding these lands from conservation calculations ignores the significant environmental preservation Vermonters are already accomplishing through voluntary participation and responsible land management.
Most Vermonters support protecting natural resources and preserving the rural character of the state. State policy should empower them to continue doing exactly that. Farms preserve open space while supporting Vermont’s rural economy. Managed forests store carbon and protect watersheds. Sugarmakers, farmers, and foresters have been caring for these landscapes long before lawmakers in Montpelier adopted arbitrary conservation mandates, and they have the right to retain that freedom. It should not be the role of government to undermine property rights or assume centralized planners are better equipped to manage the land than the people who live and work on it every day.
Unfortunately, because the state has committed itself to rigid conservation quotas, pressure has steadily increased to impose additional restrictions and regulatory barriers in order to satisfy those benchmarks. Authority is gradually shifting away from the people closest to the land, which carries serious consequences.
Vermont is already facing a severe housing shortage, rising property taxes, and an affordability crisis that continues pushing young families and working-age residents out of the state. Expanding permanent land restrictions while limiting future development opportunities only intensifies those challenges. Families hoping to build housing for the next generation, expand a farm operation, or create new economic opportunities on their property increasingly encounter layers of permits, regulations, and bureaucratic hurdles.
Many rural Vermonters are now confronting the reality that they may lose the freedom to make reasonable decisions about land their families have stewarded for generations.
H.70 offers a path forward that better balances conservation with respect for property rights and individual liberty. Instead of expanding top-down restrictions, it recognizes the success of a voluntary, incentive-based system that has already preserved millions of acres of working land across Vermont. It respects the role private landowners play in conservation rather than diminishing it. It preserves flexibility for future generations while continuing to support environmental stewardship in the present.
Most importantly, H.70 recognizes a principle that has long served Vermont: the people closest to the land are usually the best equipped to care for it.
Conservation policy does not need to come at the expense of individual liberty, property rights, or local self-governance. Vermont can protect its environment without empowering an increasingly centralized system of land-use control by working with Vermonters, not around them.
