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Community Forests Project

Certified Ecoforestry

Community, Not Monoculture

Take a moment and imagine yourself in one of Vermont's most widespread natural communities, the Northern Hardwood Forest. Some 40% of the forestlands participating with Vermont Family Forests belong to this natural community. As you walk through this forest on a late spring day, the songs of hermit thrush, ovenbird, and veery cascade through the trees. Painted trilliums and trout lilies bloom among ground pine and winterberry. You climb over moss-cloaked logs, and skirt a vernal pool where spotted salamanders and leopard frogs breed each spring. Though sugar maple, beech, and yellow birch dominate the landscape, you spot white ash, red maple, and white pine along the way. And though you have  observed carefully, you have noticed only a fraction of the plants and animals that inhabit this place.

It is into this complex community that the forester comes to select wood to harvest for human uses.

Overseeing Ecological Forestry at Vermont Family Forests

Ecological forest management conserves water quality, site productivity, and native biological diversity. Landowners who enroll their forests with Vermont Family Forests, whether certified or non-certified, agree to adhere to a checklist of 36 management practices that facilitate such conservation. VFF shows forest stewards how to implement the practices and monitors all harvest activities on VFF certified forestlands to assure that the ecological forestry practices are fully implemented.

As a landowner, you can take part in VFF in two ways, depending on your management objectives for your land. Our Introductory Information for Forest Landowners packet provides information about Vermont Family Forests programs.

Non-Certified Participation

Some landowners simply wish to manage their land in an ecologically sustainable manner and to be part of a network of private landowners similarly managing their forestlands. These landowners sign a forest conservation agreement with VFF in which they agree to manage their lands in accordance with Vermont Family Forests' Forest Management Checklist to the maximum practical extent. They receive VFF's newsletters and reports and have access to workshops, landowner gatherings, ecological forestry products, and one-on-one guidance in achieving their forest management objectives. Their $25 annual fee supports VFF's education outreach. Our guide to non-certified enrollment outlines the simple process of non-certified enrollment.

Certified Participation

Some landowners additionally wish to market their forest products in a way that promotes and capitalizes on their ecological forest management. VFF offers these landowners the opportunity to green-certify their lands through a third-party, independent certifier (the Forest Stewardship Council) and helps these landowners access markets for their wood products. To certify their forestlands, landowners need to perform some basic steps, outlined below.

When your land is enrolled in the Vermont Family Forests’ certified pool of well-managed forests, you make a commitment to practice ecological forest management that includes:

• Forest inventory systems that carefully assess forest health,
• Forest vegetation management that closely resembles natural forests, and
• Properly designed, constructed, and maintained access networks.

Our Landowner's Guide to Vermont Family Forests Certification provides detailed information about the certification process.

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Certification Requirements

To maintain the integrity of the Family Forest® brand, VFF requires a signed Memorandum of Agreement, a comprehensive forest management plan, a natural community map, a stable access network, and marked property boundaries.

Below is a brief description of each certification requirement–what it is, why it’s a requirement, and how you go about satisfying it:

Memorandum of Agreement
A memorandum of agreement is a contract that establishes the responsibilities of VFF and participating landowners. Please read the enclosed MOA carefully, and be sure to check with VFF staff if you have any questions about the outlined responsibilities. A landowner may end his/her contract with VFF at any time by giving written notification.

Management Plan
Certified management plans need to meet specifications established by our independent certified, the Forest Stewardship Council. While all forest management plans require forest inventory data collection, VFF management plans are often more comprehensive, and include information on condition of access roads, stream buffers, native habitat, natural communities, forest health, site quality, and specific landowner objectives. Vermont Family Forests offers management planning on a fee-for-service basis. We’d be glad to create your management plan, or we can provide you with plan and map templates if you’d prefer to complete the plan on your own.

Natural Communities Map
A natural community is “an interacting assemblage of organisms, their physical environment, and the natural processes that affect them ”. In Vermont, ecologists have identified more than 80 distinct natural communities. Managing land according to its natural community type allows managers to identify and conserve rare or fragile communities. Such mapping also allows managers to predict and manage for the plants and animals associated with each natural community.

As with preparation of a management plan, Vermont Family Forests can develop your natural communities map on a fee-for-service basis. Alternatively, we can provide a map template if you’d prefer to pursue mapping on your own.

Boundary Marking
It is important that your boundaries are correct and made clearly visible to avoid timber trespass—when someone harvests trees not on their own property. Most timber harvest contracts specify that the landowner is liable to pay the penalty (ranging from 1 to 5 times the current market value of the trees, plus damages) when a timber trespass occurs. VFF sells, at cost, latex boundary marking paint as an alternative to traditional oil-based boundary marking paints. Vermont Family Forests’s boundary marking worksheet, Painting Your Property Boundaries, offers basic marking information and suggests other resources for more detailed marking information.

Access Roads
Vermont’s Acceptable Management Practices were created to upgrade water quality and reduce existing risks of causing water pollution and site degradation. All private and public roads in Vermont must, by law, be designed and maintained according to Vermont’s AMPs. Should VFF determine that your access roads need improvement to meet AMP standards, you will need to make the necessary improvements to meet your certification responsibilities.

When selecting an equipment operator to perform access road work, look for contractors who have lots of experience working in the forest and who are familiar with Vermont’s AMPs. Vermont Family Forests can recommend equipment operators in your area.

Certification Fees
Independent, third-party certification shows customers that we’re really practicing what we preach. The Forest Stewardship Council, through its Smartwood certification program, provides this important verification. Such independent certification costs money, both for the annual audit performed by FSC and for staff hours required to enter new forests into our certified forest pool. Because of this, we charge a $200 one-time fee to certify a new forest. This covers VFF’s costs for reviewing your management plan, map, and MOA to assure compliance with all certification requirements. With this certification fee, you’ll receive VFF’s beautiful 9” x 20” metal Forest Steward sign for your forest. We also charge a $40 annual fee to cover annual certification audit costs.

If and when you carry out a timber sale, we will monitor the sale to ensure that it meets FSC requirements. We charge $50/hour for monitoring, which typically takes two hours.