Vermont is filled with land lovers

That Vermonters cherish their rural landscape has been a fact of the state's political and cultural life for a long time. Now the degree of ardor felt by Vermonters about their land has been described in a new poll of Vermonters' attitudes taken for the Vermont Land Trust by the Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont.

The poll asked a number of questions of 441 randomly selected Vermonters, and it was said to have a confidence level of 95 percent. The responses were so overwhelmingly in favor of land conservation and the value of the state's rural landscape that any sort of margin of error must be considered irrelevant.

For example, the poll asked, "What makes Vermont a unique and special place to live?" About 75 percent pointed to the natural environment or the rural landscape. Eight-seven percent said that without land conservation efforts these valuable rural attributes would be imperiled. Eighty percent said tourism and recreation would also be harmed without land conservation.

The importance of agriculture was cited almost unanimously by the respondents — 94 percent said the presence of working farms was important or extremely important.

Two-thirds of those responding said land conservation should be supported by public funding.

It is not controversial to defend the value of Vermont's landscape. It is as wholesome as apple pie. It is an attitude that has shaped public policy for decades, through periods of economic ups and downs, of liberal and conservative government.

It explains why people live in a place with a harsh and demanding climate where wages and salaries are lower than elsewhere and where the economic opportunities are limited. In recent days Vermonters driving with their windows down have experienced a luxuriant atmosphere perfumed by lilacs and freshly mown meadows. The varied landscape of meadow, pasture, woods, rivers, lakes, villages and towns is a value that cannot be bought.

This value explains why it has always been difficult for business interests to bash down the regulations that form a protective barrier against untrammeled and heedless development. For years Republicans insisted on "reforming" Act 250, the state's land use law, and after years of effort, they succeeded in enacting modest changes to the law's appeals process, leaving mostly intact Vermont's revered law.

Programs to help farmers stay in business generally have wide appeal. Tax breaks for farms and programs to help them solve problems, such as manure management, are in accord with Vermonters' desire to maintain a working landscape. Vermont policymakers are also compelled to pay close attention to the price fluctuations that plague the state's dairy industry.

It is mandatory for Vermont politicians to be environmentally conscious. Gov. James Douglas has worked to help farmers clean up the state's waters. This year the Legislature passed and the governor signed a growth center law encouraging economic development in our downtown districts or adjacent land, instead of allowing growth to sprawl unconstrained along the state's highways, chewing up land and sapping the vitality of our villages and towns.

The poll results must be gratifying for the Vermont Land Trust, which is in the business of helping preserve agricultural land, in part through conservation easements, which allow farmers to work the land while removing the development pressures that could otherwise lead to its conversion to other uses.

Conservation of farmland and the preservation of wilderness areas are sometimes viewed as elitist causes, but these poll results show support so overwhelming among Vermonters that it is more accurate to consider the narrow minority that opposes conservation as a would-be elite, more concerned about its own economic gain than about a widely shared public value.

The wide support for environmental values suggests that land conservation is not the pet project of wealthy newcomers. It is understood as essential by flatlanders, natives, farmers, town dwellers, liberals, conservatives.

For Vermonters it is apple pie.