Vermont Traditions Coalition

08/18/2026

Two public hearings have been scheduled to solicit input on the proposed bear rule changes:

-August 24 at 6:30 p.m., at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, 1265 Main Street, St. Johnsbury, VT 05819. This meeting has a hybrid option. To join the meeting remotely, please use the link on Vermont Fish and Wildlife’s website under Board Rules.

-August 27 at 6:30 p.m. at Bennington Elks Lodge, 125 Washington Ave., Bennington, VT 05201.

The changes proposed by the Fish and Wildlife Board would eliminate the consecutive "early" and "late" seasons to create one bear season extending from September 1 through the last day of the regulated deer seasons.

The proposed rule would require the purchase of a bear tag to take a bear during the bear season.

The bear hounding season would run from September 1 for Vermont residents and September 15 for nonresidents, through the second Sunday after the start of regular November deer season.

The proposed changes would allow a second bear tag in annually specified Wildlife Management Units and prohibit the intentional taking of a sow bear accompanied by a cub or cubs.

Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities are available upon request. Individuals making such requests should provide a description of the requested accommodation and must include their contact information. Please send an e-mail to [email protected] or call 802-461-8187 (voice), 1-800-253-0191 (TTY).
Public comments can be submitted via email to [email protected] through September 4, 2026.

More information on the proposed rule changes is available online at:

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board considers, amends and votes on rules and procedures that govern management of fish and wildlife resources within the state.

08/11/2026

It’s primary day! Get out and vote! The primaries are a place where you can really make some significant and important decisions on who is running in November. If you run into candidates at the polls, make sure you ask their position on the issues that you care about, and vote accordingly! It takes no time at all, and it makes a huge difference.

Mike

08/06/2026

If you’re from Addison County or nearby, this club Is for you!

Discover the Addison County Sporting Club, a community dedicated to promoting ethical hunting, fishing, trapping, and shooting sports in a supportive environment.

08/04/2026

If you’re stopping by the Addison County fair this week, make sure to come see us in the Paquette building! 

07/31/2026

07/20/2026

A Message from Steve Hardy, President, Vermont Forest Products Association, on the Closure of Finch Paper and Exit from Pulp Production in Our Region:

News that Finch Paper in Glens Falls, New York, will stop making its own pulp and buy it instead from outside suppliers is another devastating gut punch to the Vermont forest products industry. For generations, Finch has been one of the largest buyers of low-grade wood in our region, taking the crooked, diseased, and otherwise unmarketable logs that come out of every well-run timber harvest. When a buyer that size steps back, the ripple effects reach every log landing in our state.

Pulpwood markets play an instrumental role in all forestry operations. They are the financial mechanism that makes good forestry possible. A forester marking a timber sale has to remove poor-quality, damaged, and overcrowded trees to improve the stand's health and long-term value. Without a buyer for that low-value wood, that work becomes harder to justify economically. Landowners are left with fewer options. They can subsidize it themselves, skip management all together, or high-grade the property by taking the best trees and leaving the rest, exactly what good forestry is meant to avoid.

The consequences reach beyond timber value. Forests that go unmanaged trend toward even-aged, single-story stands with less habitat diversity, more vulnerability to invasive pests and disease, and weaker long-term carbon storage. Vermont's biodiversity, water quality, and recreational forests all depend on foresters and loggers staying active across the landscape.

Finch's move is not an isolated event. It joins a growing list of resource-processing capacity leaving our region. Each had its own reasons, but together they point to the Northeast having become too costly and uncertain a place for resource-based processors to reinvest in.
That should be a four-alarm fire for anyone who cares about Vermont's working landscape, and for policymakers in Montpelier. Nearly everything our forests produce needs an industrial process nearby to become usable, and those plants need affordable energy, skilled labor, reliable transportation, and a regulatory environment they can plan around. When it gets harder to operate here, production shifts elsewhere, and we end up shipping wood away to be processed, then buying it back, adding fuel, trucking, and lost opportunity that loggers, truckers, farmers, and landowners absorb.
Vermont's elected officials and candidates for office, at every level, need to recognize the scale of what's happening in our rural economy.

This isn't one mill making one business decision. It's a pattern, and it's telling us that owning and managing forestland in Vermont is getting harder to justify financially. If we want working forests to survive, we need to fix what's within our control including streamlining permitting timelines, strategic investment in technical education pathways into forestry and trucking careers, implementation of tax policies that are competitive with our neighbors, and extending agricultural-style support programs and laws to support forestry. None of these alone will solve it, but addressing them one at a time is how we stop the bleeding.

The Vermont Forest Products Association will track how this transition affects regional wood markets in the months ahead, and will keep pressing policymakers to treat the loss of processing capacity as the emergency it is, before Vermont loses more of the infrastructure a working forest economy depends on.

Thank you,
Steve Hardy
VFPA, President

07/15/2026

If you know something, reach out to the wardens.

Vermont Fish and Wildlife seeks person who shot black bear near Newbury - https://www.wcax.com/news/2026/07/14/vermont-fish-wildlife-seeks-person-who-shot-black-bear-near-newbury/

07/12/2026

Up at GMSG for the final weigh in of their annual fishing derby. Stop by and say hi, jump in on the silent auction, and check out the store. Brien Lemois and Trish Jones have a phenomenal selection of outdoor gear here as well as a significant selection of stones for you rockhounds.

This is the third year they’ve supported our efforts through the derby and other donations, and I can’t say enough good about them.

If you are an angler, hunter, or shooter, don’t miss the chance to stop by when you are up in the kingdom and support this business that supports your lifestyle!