Vermont Land Trust

Vermont is endowed with a landscape where human life and enterprise thrive in relationship with nature. This relationship shapes our state's character and our rural settlement pattern of compact villages and towns surrounded by fields, waterways, and forested hillsides. These natural assets remain remarkably intact, but they are threatened.

Our farms—the essence of rural Vermont—are disappearing. Other productive, recreational, and scenic lands are being lost irrevocably to careless or unplanned growth. Continuation of these trends will extinguish future choices for Vermont, including participation in new forms of agriculture and tourism. The heritage of our landscape and communities is essential to our state's economy and well-being.

To a large extent our economic choices will determine the future relationship between nature and the human community. Economic growth can take Vermonters in many directions. The Vermont Land Trust believes the sustainable path—one which uses the interest generated by our natural assets without eroding the principal—will allow for both economic growth and the conservation of our exceptional landscape and the quality of life it supports. This path encourages farming, forestry, and wilderness and reflects Vermont's traditional values.

In the true role of a trust—caring for valuable resources–we are working to conserve productive, recreational, and scenic lands to assure for all generations this treasure that is Vermont. "The Vermont Land Trust vision statement" ''The Vermont Land Trust vision statement''retrieved December 10, 2006.

• Vermont Land Trust website