To the editor:
We applaud Mr. Riley’s excellent opinion piece on ecological forestry [“Embracing ecological forestry, a new approach to forest management,” VTDigger, November 11, 2025]. We share his love of forests.
Forest loss and fragmentation diminish both the vast biological and ecological functions of forests and all the benefits we humans derive from forests. Permanent conservation is needed to keep forests as forests.
Ecological forestry, which we fully endorse, is an approach to both maintain forests and to produce the products we need locally.
We also need more wild forests: forests that are allowed to mature with free will, under natural processes and evolving over time.
As forests mature, they become more complex biologically and structurally, store vast amounts of carbon and are scientific benchmarks for bettering our understanding of forest ecology and management. Moreover, wild forests and all their inhabitants simply have inherent value. We have a responsibility to protect them.
Wild forests are rare in the region.
The 2023 report, “Wildlands in New England: Past, Present, and Future.” identified only 3.3% of the region as protected wildlands. Both this report and Vermont Conservation Design call for at least nine to ten percent of the landscape to be protected as wildland or old forest.
The 2024 analysis and report, “Beyond the Illusion of Preservation” identifies three steps for our forests’ future: Protect forests (at least 10 percent of the land as wildlands, 70 percent as managed woodlands), reduce consumption by 25 percent and expand ecological forestry.
We need more wild forests and more ecological forestry, and we have plenty of room for both.
Eric Sorenson, Calais
Brett Engstrom, Marshfield
Liz Thompson, Williston
This commentary first appeared in VTDigger, December 16, 2025. Eric Sorenson, Brett Engstrom and Liz Thompson are ecologists with professional experience in Vermont and the Northeast and all board members of Northeast Wilderness Trust.
Eric Sorenson
Brett Engstrom
