After the Norman Conquest of 1066, King William the Conqueror moved swiftly to take personal control of ultimately one third of the land of England. William created his infamous Forest Courts to put an end to the immemorial rights of the Saxon peasants to make use of the common forest. Woe unto the peasant who ventured into the what had become King’s forest, as his ancestors had done for generations, to cut roof beams, gather acorns, recover a lost hog, or worst of all, take a deer.

Naturally, the Saxons bitterly resented these harsh laws. It took them almost three hundred years of suffering and servitude before they won their struggle to regain multiple use rights in their national forests.

Edward’s Forest Charter of 1297 “disafforested” most of the common forests that the Norman kings had taken from the people, going back to 1154. Thereafter the people could once again pass through the forests toll free, drive their swine, gather honey and acorns, house their hawks and falcons, and even take a deer (in view of a ranger, or if none was handy, by thereafter blowing a horn, “that it might not look like theft”.)

This ancient struggle is being played out again in Vermont today. The Vermont Wilderness Association, a coalition of 15 enviro groups, wants the King in far-off Washington (Congress) to lock up 79,200 acres of the Green Mountain National Forest to forever deny to the people their ancient rights of use. Fighting for the people is a coalition of sportsmen, snowmobilers, loggers, wood products businesses, selectboards, and others who support the Forest Service’s traditional multiple use management.

“Wilderness”, in federal law, is extremely restrictive. It prohibits private motorized vehicles. No timber harvesting, not even removal of down trees for firewood for low-income rural families. No chain saw clearing of deadfalls across trails. No wildlife habitat management. The only technology allowed is hidden tread sensors and even video cameras, so the government can find out what visitors are doing.

In 1975 the wilderness advocates demanded, and got, 17,300 acres of designated wilderness at Bristol Cliffs and Lye Brook. Nine years later the wilderness people were back demanding another 100,000 acres. (They never give anything. They just demand, and there is no limit to their appetite.) Sen. Patrick Leahy and then-Rep. James Jeffords saw that they got another 42,000.

Now the Forest Service is holding public hearings on its draft forest management plan. The Vermont Wilderness Association demands that the Forest Service adopt the version with the maximum amount of designated wilderness. The opponents want traditional multiple use management to continue, and say that the 60,000 acres already locked up are more than enough.

Well, why not designate more wilderness? For the simple reason that federal designation forever prohibits ordinary Vermonters from having any say over the use of the people’s forest. As one wilderness opponent testified to Congress in 1984, “If all power to influence decisions [about the Forest] is stripped from us by the act of a Congress half a thousand miles away, what is left of our right to participate in civic decision making? What becomes of our chance to participate, to debate, to challenge, to propose, to resolve, to vote - those features of Vermont government which have to two centuries distinguished our little state, and made its sons and daughters, however humble their station in life, proud to be Vermonters?”

The wilderness advocates’ never-ending demands have an almost theological goal: to force the human race to atone for its crimes against the environment. The more that people can be denied economic or recreational use of the national forest, the larger the offering laid at the shrine of their Earth Goddess.

On April 6 the Vermont House, on an 86-56 vote, adopted a resolution opposing even one acre of additional federal wilderness designation. The House’s predecessors in 13th century England, who forced an imperious king to give back their forest, would have understood, and applauded. And they might wonder why their descendants aren’t fighting to take back some of what the wilderness groups have already succeeded in locking up.