Action Alerts

Vermont’s Green Mountain Forest is under threat

What's At Stake

The Forest Service is about to decide whether to log thousands of acres of Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest. The massive timber sale is part of a management plan called the Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project and would impact mostly mature forests. Tell the U.S. Forest Service that you oppose this project. 

Read More

At 400,000 acres, the Green Mountain National Forest features dramatic mountains, enchanting forests, and rushing rivers. It supports recreational opportunities like the Long Trail, Appalachian National Scenic Trail, cross-country skiing, and wildlife viewing, which draw millions of visitors each year. In autumn, there’s nowhere more spectacular to see the display of fall foliage as the sugar maples, beech and birch are glowing with reds, oranges and yellows. 

The landscape targeted for logging includes a vast “Inventoried Roadless Area” and forests with major concentrations of mature and late-successional trees between 80 and 160 years old. Large roadless areas are rare in Vermont and New England and are especially important for biodiversity and clean water. The Green Mountain National Forest is a significant carbon sink and protects downstream communities from flooding, which is among the greatest threats to New England as the climate changes. The mature forests in the Telephone Gap project area are rapidly accumulating. Forests in New England could store 2-4 times more carbon if allowed to grow old. Logging can also exacerbate natural disasters, like the historic floods experienced by Vermont last summer.  

The Telephone Gap timber sale has been called one of the worst logging projects on federal lands by the Climate Forests Campaign, a national coalition of 120 environmental groups, including Earthjustice and our local partner in Vermont, Standing Trees. It would endanger the water quality of the White River and Otter Creek, put downstream communities in greater danger of flooding, risk introducing invasive species, and destroy habitat for threatened and endangered species. 

The climate, biodiversity, and the health of our communities are all at stake – please take action today by sending a letter and help us send a strong message to the US Forest Service: protect Green Mountain National Forest! 

Bird's eye view of a forest with a lake in the middle
Aerial photo of North Pond in Telephone Gap landscape area. (John Geery)

Delivery to U.S. Forest Service

Important Notice

Your message is delivered to the United States Forest Service, and all information submitted may be placed in the public record. Do not submit confidential information.

By taking action, you will receive emails from Earthjustice. Change your mailing preferences or opt-out at any time. Learn more in our Privacy Policy. This Earthjustice action is hosted on EveryAction. Learn about EveryAction’s Privacy Policy.

Why is a phone number or prefix required on some action forms?

Trouble Viewing This Action?

If the action form is not loading above, please add earthjustice.org as a trusted website in your ad blocker or pause any ad blockers, and refresh this webpage. (Details.) If the action form still does not display, please report the problem to us at action@earthjustice.org. Thank you!

Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.