In the 1950s, Hugo Meyer began buying abandoned Vermont farmland to grow timber; his family has now helped permanently protect more than 18,000 acres from development

Growing up in Hardwick on a dairy farm, woods were a major part of Andrew Meyer’s life. He would often spend time camping and hiking around East Long Pond and as a kid, he visited logging jobs in the area of the Worcester Range with his grandfather or uncle.

A history of sustainable timber management

Meyer said his family’s been managing the woods as a working forest since the 1950s, when his grandfather started purchasing land in the region. Hugo Meyer began buying abandoned farmland after World War II to reforest it for timber. In the decades since, the family has owned and managed thousands of acres in and around the Worcester Range, maintaining the land as a working forest. As pressures on land have increased over recent decades, the family felt conservation offered a way to keep the property together and support continued family ownership and sustainable management.“These forests have been part of our family’s story for generations,” said landowner Andrew Meyer. “Conservation offers a way to keep the land together while continuing the stewardship and sustainable forestry practices that have shaped it over the years. We’re proud to be part of an effort that protects the character of this landscape, supports our continued management of this working forest, and helps ensure that future generations can benefit from the same connection to the land that our family has had.”The conserved land includes extensive and varied forest habitat and wetlands, as well as a mile of undeveloped shoreline along East Long Pond. The property has been actively managed for timber for decades and will remain a working forest under the conservation easement. Forest Legacy easements are specifically designed to prevent fragmentation and development while allowing sustainable forestry to continue.Over the years, E.B. Hyde Corp., Meyer’s family-run timber company, worked for more than a decade with several partner organisations to bring more than 18,000 acres under conservation easements. In August 2026, they finalised the last of the three phases of the Worcester Woods project, placing more than 3,400 acres into an easement. The project involves a partnership among the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, the Vermont Land Trust and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, along with other partners. Much of the funding for this project came from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program. That’s revenue that comes partly from leasing federal offshore oil and gas sites.

A vital natural corridor

According to Kate Sudhoff, a land conservation manager at the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, what has been conserved by Meyers’ family is an important wildlife corridor, a contiguous tract that animals can use to travel across the landscape. It is home to loons and some rare plants and flowers, and there’s a mile of lake frontage on East Long Pond. Its main ecological value, though, is that it’s an intact northern hardwood forest, an important habitat for wildlife in the state. It’s also a high-priority conservation area for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. “This one, we always thought of as the gem,” Sudhoff said.“It requires a very patient landowner,” she said, noting it can take years for everything to be finalised. “They have to be really willing and interested in selling these rights and holding the land. And the landowner’s interest in the land has to align with the program.” Meyer is very patient as a landowner. He said trees take 80 years to grow, and he manages his forests in 20- and 30-year cycles. “You have to think long term because these trees take so long to grow, and the health of the forest is critical to that,” he said.For him, the permanent easement will allow the opportunity to think about the future of the land more easily. He doesn’t have to worry about development pressure or policy changes ever. “The understanding that that’s really part of the legacy of what my grandfather had envisioned and set forth over 70 years ago,” he said.Easement purchases are a conservation tool where the land remains in private ownership, but the landowner is bound to the restrictions and agreements that come with the easement. For example, easements involving the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation require that the area be publicly accessible and open for hunting.Will Duane is the land acquisition coordinator with Vermont Fish & Wildlife. He said that even if the landowner decides to sell the land, the easement remains, and the public rights go along with the property. “We’re paying the landowners,” he said. “They’re keeping the land private, but they’re selling some of those land rights to us to conserve it and to bring the public onto it.”The land can’t be subdivided and developed, and an appraisal process determines the difference in value between what the owners might make from selling and developing the land instead of keeping it in conservation. They’re selling those rights, which cost a little less than $5 million for the final phase of the Worcester Woods project.Vermont Fish & Wildlife also purchased from the Meyer family a 301-acre parcel that will become part of the Buck Lake Wildlife Management Area. That expanded the footprint of the Green Mountain Conservation Camp, a popular and affordable summer camp in the wildlife management area where kids can learn outdoor skills and natural science. “It’s a real win-win-win across the board,” Duane said.Meyer now plans to sustainably log the Worcester Woods for many generations. “This is such a big, important piece of land in our region that so many people enjoy,” he said. “Whether they’re the logger cutting the wood, or the hunter or the hiker, or just knowing there are large parcels of contiguous land around them is what makes this region of Vermont so special. “We’re obligated to recognise that and be in the position to help keep that the way it is, and a lot of people are going to benefit from that.”Beyond Vermont’s borders, scientists and conservation organisations have long recognised Worcester Woods as a critical link for climate resilience and wildlife movement. In 2012, the Staying Connected Initiative highlighted the Worcester Range as the “linchpin” connecting larger forest landscapes across northern New England and southeastern Canada.