A Season of Giving and Growth

Greeting friends, and welcome to the Winter 2024/25 edition of CONNECTIONS, the quarterly newsletter from Cold Hollow to Canada. We hope this edition finds you enjoying the new snow which blanketed our region as we turned the calendar to December, bringing the promise of winter regardless of how you enjoy the colder, shorter days of the season—whether on the hill, in the forest, or curled before the woodstove.

Thank you to all who came out for CHC’s Annual Gathering this fall at the Montgomery Grange Hall. It was a wonderful evening of fellowship and food as we shared a meal together and heard from Caitlin Littlefield about her and her partners work on the recent report Beyond the Illusion of Preservation. Caitlin’s presentation presented a compelling case for why New England is poised to be a leader in advancing both forest protection and sustainable harvesting of forest products, while still upholding the ecological and social values that form the foundation of our work. Their ambitious vision of forest protection, reduced consumption, and expanded ecological forestry can help us meet the urgent climate and biodiversity goals of the present moment. At a time when much of the public conversation around the management of Vermont’s forests (and especially our public lands) looks to passive management, reserves, and wilderness, Caitlin and her team lay out a compelling case that while wildlands are a key component to meeting our goals, a more critical path lies in the permanent protection of our working forests and the high standard with which we steward them. They also highlight that we must address the inequity of our consumption habitats (fueling our lives with wood products from away, rather than those grown and produced here) and the misguided attempt to preserve forests in our own backyard at the expense of those elsewhere in the Northern Forest and around the globe, something termed “leakage”. Rather, we must take responsibility for our consumption habitats and look locally at meeting our needs—looking at impact and opportunity with clear eyes as we weigh the ecological, economic, and social trade-offs of our actions.  

This message was recently echoed in an opinion piece penned by a coalition of Conservation Organizations which appeared in many outlets, including Vermont Digger. In the op-ed, these organizations (which include our partners such as the Vermont Land Trust, Audubon Vermont, Vermont Natural Resource Council, Nature Conservancy, and Northeast Wilderness Trust) look to the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation’s recently released long-term management plan for the Worcester Range as an example of how we must balance a wide range of uses and functions as we look at our collective tools for biodiversity protection in the face of a clime-impacted future. While some small but vocal advocates still decry the cutting of any trees on public lands—instead pushing a narrative that we can “not-cut” our way out of the climate crisis—we hope that the broad consensus found in this op-ed helps inform the collective future management of our public lands, especially as we look to the pending development of the Jay State Forest long-range management plan being drafted right here in our own back yard. We hope that all our members and supporters will engage with this process over the next year as work together to support forests and wildlife for future generations.

As we look towards the end of the year and our plans for 2025, we here at Cold Hollow to Canada are turning our attention (and hopefully yours!) to annual giving, and specifically an amazing opportunity which we’ve been presented with from our friends at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board: This fall, VHCB awarded our organization an Organizational Expansion Grant backing our work by providing$175,000 over 2-years to support the on-boarding of CHC’s very first full-time Executive Director! This amazing opportunity to expand our capacity and accelerate our critical work in the region also comes with a challenge:matching the award with an increased giving of $25,000 from our community and friends.

With your help, funds raised through the Annual Appeal will help us meet this vital matching challenge to unlock these critical funds and grow our capacity at a whole new scale. This coming year the Board and Staff will embark on drafting a new 5-year strategic plan to bring us to our foundational 2030 goal. With a new Executive Director in place, Cold Hollow to Canada will be able to accelerate our conservation work, grow our partnerships, and raise the money necessary to re-capitalize our Conservation Fund, all while continuing to explore innovative ways to expand ecological forest management and climate resiliency across the shared landscape we call home.  

As you consider philanthropic support this year, please consider a donation to Cold Hollow to Canada, and thank you to all our friends and neighbors who have already clicked on over to our donation page or mailed in a check. Every dollar counts as we look towards the work ahead, and we couldn’t do it without you.

Wishing you and yours a healthy and prosperous New Year, thank you from all of us here at Cold Hollow to Canada. We hope to see you in the woods in 2025.

Charlie Hancock