Deforestation & Exploitation: Bucolic Vermont’s Troubled Past
By Alex De Luise
May 6, 2021
Replete with lusciously green rolling hills and a chain of coniferous capped peaks, “The Green Mountain State'' fits well as a nickname for Vermont. It is central to its immense tourism industry, which boasts of endless ski resorts and leaf-peeping possibilities for families and children. These activities, along with bucolic farm life, small, one-church villages, and sweet, sticky maple syrup are what the state is known for. Picturesque images of this Vermont culture have been heavily promoted over the past fifty years. The state-sponsored Vermont Life magazine frequently depicts snow-capped barns, covered bridges, and miles of cow pasture dotted with ochre and crimson on its front covers. Vermont is characterized by this ubiquitous imagery, significant of a widely idealized view of its natural landscape. The largely forested state is perceived as pristine, ‘untouched,’ and even utopic. Often overlooked, though, are the nearly 200 years of exploitation embedded in Vermont’s history. Many are unaware of how colonial settlement decimated Indigenous populations. Even more do not know that nearly the entire state was deforested and most of its wildlife hunted by the late 1800s.
The ways in which the tourism industry has branded Vermont as idyllic raises questions about whether the state’s natural landscape is still being exploited, but through new means. University of Vermont Geography Professor Harlan Morehouse spoke to this question, explaining that though settler colonialism and extraction have shaped the way people consume Vermont today, this is the case for most American states. Dominant narratives about our current landscapes tend to hide the violent colonial foundations they were based upon.
These histories are intentionally left out of Vermont’s narrative today as the state began to construct Vermont’s image as an ideal tourist destination in the mid-1900s. Morehouse explains that it “effectively gambl[ed] that people would be attracted to old 18th-century ideals of what it meant to exist in comfortable, predictable, and seasonal communities where they could cultivate safe, intimate relationships with the world around them.” By locking in this pastoral aesthetic as a “mode of production,” (a new form of exploitation) origins of dispossession from settler colonialism were covered up, making the state attractive to economically mobile people interested in skiing and an ‘authentic’ American experience.
The challenge of Vermont’s ‘pastoral ideal’ is that not everyone can equally participate. Its aesthetic is appealing to those of a particular socio-economic class, despite it largely depending on idealizations of farm labor and peasantry. In many cases, economically marginalized and dispossessed Vermonters have not been able to take part in these kinds of dominant American aesthetics. As the state is known to be predicated largely on exclusivity, it is important to evaluate the ways Vermont today is either challenging those narratives or perpetuating them.
To do so, Vermont’s exploitive history must be acknowledged and dismantled. Dr. Cheryl Morse of the University of Vermont Geography Department spoke to the state’s complex past, explaining that colonization in Vermont differed significantly from the way it looked across the rest of the East Coast. Its wild landscape and Indigenous population were deemed as ‘dangerous,’ deterring many colonists from settling. In the early 1720s, a series of battles between white New Englanders and the Wabanaki Confederacy of the Vermont area (specifically Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, and Maliseet tribes at the time) solidified this colonial fear. Vermont tribes such as Abenaki and Mahican were perceived as forms of resistance, and unrest due to the French and Indian War also intimidated settlers. When the war ended, a clear border was marked between French and British territory, making white settlers feel safe enough to move in. At this time, resources in Southern New England were scarce. Population pressure was rising with the new borders in effect, and soon after the war, Morse shared that “it was as if a spigot was turned on and people rushed in.” Known by historians as “the great swarming,” a massive influx of settlers began to clear land for subsistence farming—doing so at a much faster rate than the gradual settlement of other states. Nonetheless, impacts of settler colonialism had reached Vermont long before the state was deemed viable for settlement, as disease from the previous century’s fur trade had already severely harmed Indigenous populations along the entire East Coast.
The bulk of Vermont’s colonization began in the late 1700s when the state faced pressure to ‘catch up’ to its East Coast counterparts in its settlement. Morse explains that this meant fast, widespread deforestation for the purpose of “potash mining, clearing for pasture, and a growing lumber industry.” Land needed to be clear-cut to make way for new industries and towns. In the early 1800s, Merino sheep were introduced to “meet the demand for wool by the textile industry of New England.” These sheep required large grazing spaces, and since they could access hard-to-reach places like hilltops, they were used to clear land in these early years of deforestation. Consequently, the introduction of these sheep contributed to soil and ground-cover degradation across Vermont.
By the mid-1800s, a second wave of deforestation began due to demand for timber from out of state. The industry boomed steadily, and by its peak in 1889, according to VTDigger, “output went from 20 million board feet in 1856 to 375 million board feet,” leaving nearly 80 percent of Vermont treeless. In addition to its extensive clearcutting, Vermont had become a haven for hunting, trapping, and fishing. Settlers exploited much of the state’s wildlife population, as it had earned the reputation of a wild, undeveloped space for recreational enjoyment. The reality of barren mountainsides and severely low deer populations worried Vermonters, despite the beautiful image it was cultivating. The effects of fast-paced colonization and resource extraction were becoming visible, jeopardizing the state’s newfound tourism industry.
Though resource extraction had been the most profitable industry, social upheaval regarding the poor appearance of the state prompted the Vermont legislature to look for solutions to the deforestation crisis. In doing so, a state committee was formed to halt intense logging. Joseph Batell, publisher and philanthropist, spearheaded this effort by buying large swaths of Vermont land as a solution. He aimed to fix the deforestation problem by purchasing thousands of acres in the Green Mountains, such as Camels Hump and Breadloaf Mountain. Additionally, George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 book, Man and Nature, inspired people to focus on forest revival, as many related to his story of how intensive sheep agriculture and deforestation negatively impacted the land near his own Vermont farm. This led to new statewide sustainable forest management practices, such as “working forests,” which are forests managed to maintain output for revenue in a more sustainable way than clearcutting.
By the 1940s, Vermont was on its way to reforestation, with programs and protections dedicated to preserving forests. This was in large part due to state leaders’ realization that Vermont was at an economic disadvantage from the dissipation of the timber industry. It needed new ways of capitalizing on its landscape other than what it had done for the past 150 years, so the Vermont tourism industry was established as the new mode of production in its place. This made space for large-scale reforestation; today, Vermont has 4.6 million acres of forestland, equal to about 80 percent of its land area. A dramatic switch from the exploitation of the 1800s, this regrowth allowed for the state to lean into its adopted aesthetic for tourism.
Though it seems like regrowth could have been productive for Vermont’s natural environment, such drastic, fast-paced, human impact on the land had a major ecological impact on Vermont forests. According to Dr. Alexandra Kosiba, a Climate Forester of the Vermont Department of Forests, Vermont is living with the ecological repercussions of its exploitive past, which are visible directly through its forest structure today. Before deforestation, Vermont had many old growth forests, which are biodiverse dense forest ecosystems that have attained significant age without disturbance. Once logged, however, many forests’ structural and genetic complexity were depleted. As a result, Vermont’s forest profile today is simple because of how long it takes for forests to regain their natural complexity. In part due to soil composition changes from overgrazing and plowing, forests are now filled with large populations of northern hardwoods, including the iconic sugar maple.
Kosiba notes that the effects of deforestation were not entirely destructive, as forests are versatile. She explained that what has come from their use are the “ecological forestry” practices that are being adopted now on the state level. Vermonters realized that using all of a forest at once is damaging to forest health since taking the biggest trees with the biggest crowns removes significant genetic diversity from the forest. Today, Vermonters have learned to work more closely with forest processes and conditions, measuring them and engaging in practices that mimic natural disturbances. As many worry that a dramatically changing climate will negatively affect forest health, methods such as invasive pest management and the leaving of downed trees serve as protective measures. Since forests take so long to grow genetically diverse and become ‘complete,’ humans can only monitor and mitigate them through ecological forestry principles based on climatic changes in temperature and precipitation. Morehouse notes that Vermont’s gradual reforestation has brought about a greater degree of ecosystemic resilience which can serve the state well in a time filled with climate uncertainty. Whether or not Vermont is maintaining its exclusive pastoral aesthetic, however, depends largely on variables of climate change and the efforts being made towards social equity and inclusion.
Morehouse explains that many people in Vermont are working to build that infrastructure. Morse adds to this, suggesting that some of these efforts are new, whereas others have been happening quietly over time. Many Vermonters realize that the state will never return to its pre-colonial position and that figuring out how to live in a balanced way with other humans and the environment is all they can do. Knowing that people still need food, clean water, and resources from our land, Morse wonders what we can learn from each other to “create a better now.” She explains that there are many conservation, environmental, and justice organizations working towards this goal. Importantly, they are starting with acknowledging colonial pasts and moving forward to figure out reparations and easement rights for Abenaki and other Black, Indigenous, and people of color that have been displaced and dispossessed. These projects are moving forward in small steps.
Vermont’s history of cultural and environmental exploitation points to the state’s problematic image as a white-dominated space where Indigenous voices are ignored and erased. When tourism became the “new mode of production,” the state economically benefited from its natural resources and violent colonial settler past. Today, extraction of the state’s natural resources has slowed, allowing Vermonters to begin working with the land and marginalized voices to create a more sustainable landscape. By holding Vermont accountable for acknowledging its destructive past, space can be made for reframing and re-envisioning the state to be more inclusive and justice-driven. The creation of systems, public services, and organizations centered on mutual aid and the health of our forests and natural environments make it possible to change the narrative Vermont was predicated upon.
