Main content

Growing Up, Growing Out

Posted Thursday, August 18, 2022
— Connections 2022 Summer

Greetings Friends, and welcome to the summer 2022 edition of CONNECTIONS, the quarterly newsletter from Cold Hollow to Canada. We hope this finds you and yours enjoying all that the season has to offer here in the Northern Greens. Here at CHC it's been a very bird-focused season, and you'll find this issue full of related field notes about bird-friendly maple forest management, a morning walk with a Birder Broker, and our eBird community science workshop. We're also thrilled to announce that we will host an in-person Annual Gathering on October 20th, featuring guest speaker Jon Erickson. And we have an exciting job announcement.  

Twelve years ago, CHC was born from a group of community members looking at maps of the Cold Hollows and sharing a vision of stewardship and permanent protection of our core forests for the myriad of shared values they provide. It couldn’t get more grassroots than that, and while our capacity was limited (to say the least), our love for our corner of the Northern Forest was strong. In the intervening decade CHC has grown to be a leader in community-based forest conservation in the northeast. From the success of our Woodlots Program as a regional model for expanding stewardship on a landscape level, to launching the nations first aggregated Forest Carbon project, we’ve continued to punch above our weight as we pursued our vision of a resilient and connected ecosystem across the entire Northern Forest that is supported through sustainable stewardship, forestland conservation, and community empowerment. In 2021 we released an ambitious 5-year strategic plan to move us further towards this vision, and over the last year CHC has worked to lay the groundwork and the build the capacity to accelerate our land conservation work towards our goal conserving an additional 23,000 acres of forestland by 2030. 

None of our work to date could have been possible without a dedicated volunteer board of community members, and the most phenomenal staff an organization like ours could ask for. From a few hours a week of staff assistance lent by our partners, to a three staff model focused on programing and communications, those who have found a home at CHC have helped cultivate our vision on nothing more than a shoestring budget and a deep love for the community and the work. Now, with the foundation built and the stage set to move into a new phase accelerating our forest conservation work, CHC is poised to make another evolution as we announce our search for an Executive Director—a new position at the organization. As our model continues to evolve, and we continue to grow, our need for a dedicated, full-time hand on the wheel is more apparent than ever as we continue along our roadmap to ecosystem integrity and forest resiliency in Vermont’s Cold Hollow Mountains. This is an exciting time, and an exciting opportunity for us. Each time we’ve put the call out in the past we’ve been truly blown away by the caliber of the individuals who have stepped up to join our work, and we can’t wait to see what comes next. So, watch this space for great things to come, and please help get the word out as we seek to grow our family here at Cold Hollow to Canada.

Charlie Hancock reflects on CHC's history, and shares exciting news about the organization's growth.