Watershed Forestry Partnership Engages Over a Hundred Local Practitioners at Annual Conference
On February 20, Lake Champlain Sea Grant hosted the 2025 Watershed Forestry Partnership Meeting at the University of Vermont Davis Center with about one hundred participants. This full-day event featured more than a dozen speakers from across Vermont and the Lake Champlain basin discussing forest restoration topics including assisted migration, the upcoming guideline for planting on state lands, targeting restoration on small streams, woody additions to streams, knotweed management, and lessons learned from past projects.
“The work these organizations are doing is so incredibly important right now in light of recent catastrophic flooding, associated water quality impacts, and habitat loss,” explains Shawn White, Coordinator for the Watershed Forestry Partnership. “Restoration and good management of riparian and upland forests will provide long-term reductions in flood levels since these forests intercept and absorb rainfall.
The Watershed Forestry Partnership (WFP) is a collaborative of practitioners, tree nurseries, and researchers who share information and eliminate barriers to successful forest restoration. White oversees and provides leadership to this partnership of non-profit organizations, state and municipal government agencies, academic institutions, and others engaged in forest restoration and management by facilitating research, communication, and collaboration, including this annual meeting.
White’s work supports establishment and maintenance of vegetated stream buffers in Vermont and New York. One of her primary objectives has been to support local nurseries in order to ensure availability of plant material needed for such projects. This has involved convening local for- and non-profit nurseries to promote shared marketing, distribution, seed collection & handling.
This meeting has brought up key challenges and strategies to collaborate on a larger level. White will work with the WFP members throughout the year to address challenges and share information. While some organizations have been working in this field for years, others are new to restoration work. There is also staff turnover and institutional loss of knowledge. So we’ll be working on developing mentorship and training opportunities.
Another priority is refining restoration methods to improve the outcomes of restoration projects, which are often compromised by invasive plants or excessive deer browse. “Getting community support for this work is also important,” said White. “Restoration organizations rely on private landowners to participate in planting projects. We need to do a better job of promoting all the economic and health & safety benefits riparian and upland forests are providing. Ideally, landowners will reach out to us to sign up to restore forests on their land rather than the other way around.”