White Ash Preservation Patches at Smokey House Center, SAP-Ne Demonstration Site (Danby, VT)

This project focused on preserving white ash trees' presence across Smokey House Center’s landscape in the face of emerald ash borers spread by using a combination of silviculture and chemical treatments. Smokey House staff attempted to regenerate two pockets of white ash within half acre canopy gaps while injecting 20 mature ash trees around the gaps perimeters.

Danby, Vermont

The project area was a northern hardwoods stand at Smokey House Center called NH-11.

43.353544

-73.063473

The site resides in forest stand NH-11 at Smokey House Center’s property in Danby, VT. Smokey House Center is located at 426 Danby Mountain Rd, Danby, VT, 05739. Park in the main parking lot in front of the blue woodshop. To reach the project site by foot, walk up the Northern Loop Trail starting at the parking lot. The site resides about 1.5 miles down the Northern Loop Trail, after passing through an open meadow that has views of Killington Mountain.

Foot or Vehicle, but best for the vehicle to be able to drive on dirt forest roads and only with Smokey House Center approval.

Smokey House Center

+1 802-293-2300

38 acre stand with roughly 2 acre treatment area

Northern Hardwoods

Rich Mesic Forest

emerald ash borer

emerald ash borer

Dutchess silt loam, Massena silt loam, Stockbridge gravelly silt loam

1920

Stand was shown to be mostly forested on aerial photographs in 1941. Stand was likely initiated through pasture abandonment a few decades before then.

60

In the early 1970’s a marked timber sale was implemented in Stands RNH-1, RNH-2, and RNH-3, and over 1,000M of sugar maple sawlogs were removed. The residual stand was uniformly spaced and similarly sized hardwoods (sugar maple dominant), with little structural diversity and few cavity or den trees. No cutting has taken place since, and no other historical facts are known.

Acer saccharum (sugar maple)

49%

Fraxinus americana (white ash)

20%

Prunus serotina (black cherry)

16%

119

Emerald ash borer, invasive shrubs in understory

Smokey House Center is a non-profit organization in Danby, Vermont, dedicated to conservation, education, and sustainable land stewardship. The land was purchased by the Currier family and later transferred to their foundation, the Taconic Foundation, before Smokey House Center was established in 1974 to oversee its ongoing stewardship. Since then, the property has been managed in alignment with the organization's mission of connecting people to the land through hands-on conservation work, education, and agriculture.

Smokey House Staff were interested in reducing stand basal area to 80 while retaining high quality growing stock and regenerating white ash.

Climate resilience, wildlife habitat, wood production, education, research, recreation.

In an attempt to regenerate a cohort of desirable species, capture the value of high risk/declining trees, and increase the growth rates and vigor of developing AGS, a combination of single tree selection and group selection harvests were implemented. Stand areas dominated by shade intolerant hardwoods or bordered by insecticide-treated ash trees (not more than 10% of stand area or 3.8 acres in total) was regenerated using gaps about 1/2th acre in size. With the exception of cavity/den trees or selected seed trees, all stems 2”+ in diameter were felled in the gaps. The matrix will be tended as needed to favor future crop trees and leave an average of 80ft² of basal area per acre including both the gaps and the matrix.

The long range silvicultural objective of Stand NH-11 is to manage for periodic yields of high quality hardwood sawtimber. This will be accomplished by implementing unevenaged harvesting techniques. Harvests will attempt to naturally regenerate sugar maple, yellow birch, black cherry, white ash, and other commercial hardwood species.

• forest health
• threatened/endangered species
• climate change

We are committed to keeping a diversity of species present on the Smokey House landscape to create as much resilience as possible in the face of climate change. As such, this project was an attempt to regenerate white ash as a method for keeping it on the landscape as emerald ash borer wipes out the majority of white ash trees in the next five years in our area.

Hand felling and harvesting with skidder.

A local father and son team hand felled and skidded out trees during the dry summer months of June, July, and August in 2026. Conditions stayed dry enough for a relatively straightforward harvest to take place.

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Stand will be continuously re-inventoried by our Future Forest Apprentices in future summer of 2027.

Our Future Forester Apprentices helped Vermont Land Trust Forester Caitlin Cusack inject the 20 mature ash trees surrounding the gaps with Emamectin Benzoate.

30 hours of harvesting (paid for by operator receiving, 8 hours injecting trees (7 people)

$5,581

Operators took approximately 30 hours to harvest the patches = $3,000 6 apprentices plus 1 Smokey House Staff member spent 1 day injecting trees. This was largely an educational experience, so it was not necessarily representative of how long it actually takes to inject 20 trees. = $1,341 Tree AGE & Arbor Plugs = $1,240

We will continually monitor invasive species and manage as needed. The stand will be on a 20 year cutting rotation.

119

80

75

• feet squared per acre

173

12 inches

Walker Cammack

Program Director, Shared Leadership Team

Smokey House Center

For over fifty years, Smokey House Center has been successfully dedicated to its mission of maintaining a working landscape that promotes sustainable agricultural and forestry practices while engaging people in meaningful ways.

• SHC_Patches_2.pdf