With town forest project wrapping up, Milton conservation board previews next steps

MILTON – As Milton approaches the closing stages of a major trails project focused on its town forest, volunteers charged with managing the town’s natural areas have started detailing additional plans for trails work in the Chittenden County town.

According to William Pikul, the chairperson for Milton’s conservation commission, volunteers were preparing new kiosks for the town’s three natural areas and had started looking for grant funding to support both the new kiosks’ installation, as well as an expanded parking area for the Milton Town Forest and an improved set of stairs for a particularly steep stretch of the Lamoille River Walk.

During a presentation for Milton’s selectboard, Pikul previewed new branding for each of Milton’s natural areas, including logos designed by commission member and artist Steve Mitchell. The logos would be included on new informational kiosks with updated trail maps and information about the town’s hiking areas that appeared to align with similar signage in Milton’s other recreation areas.

“All three of the natural areas in town are going to get revamped, looked at and done at this level,” Pikul said after showcasing revised mapping and informational posters specific to the Milton Town Forest. “If you look at the kiosks out there right now, they’re very old and they’re breaking down.”

Conservation commissions are municipal bodies that generally work within a city or town’s government on issues related to environmental education and conservation. The conservation commission in Milton is charged with the administration of the town’s three natural areas, as well as educational outreach and volunteerism focused on natural resources and outdoor recreation.

According to Pikul, the arguable centerpiece among Milton’s natural areas was the Milton Town Forest, a sweeping 492-acre parcel spread across parts of Milton and Westford around the Milton Pond.

The town was just now finishing a years’ long project to extend a handicap-accessible trail through parts of the town forest and install an accessible viewing platform overlooking the Milton Marsh. According to Pikul, the wheelchair-accessible platform, developed with grant funding from a state recreation program, made the trails network in the Milton Town Forest unique among natural areas in Vermont.

“This is our new claim to fame,” Pikul said. “It’s one of four [Americans with Disabilities Act] trails in the state of Vermont, and it’s the only one that has a viewing platform to the level that we’ve built.”

In the years since the COIVD-19 pandemic brought an increased interest in outdoor recreation, use of the Milton Town Forest has increased steadily, according to Milton officials. In his presentation, Pikul described the Milton Town Forest as being well-regarded by the larger Vermont community and an attraction drawing people into Milton.

“We’ve found, since Covid, that we’ve almost tripled or quadrupled throughput at the town forest,” Pikul told the selectboard. “We have people from all over the state coming to our natural areas.”

Other properties maintained by the conservation commission included the Lamoille River Walk, a natural area tracing the Lamoille River between Ritchie Avenue and Checkerberry Square, and Eagle Mountain, property overlooking Lake Champlain that was donated to Milton in 1998 following its conservation by the Lake Champlain Land Trust.

According to Pikul, the conservation commission was looking to apply for around $60,000 in grant funding to rebuild a staircase in part of the Lamoille River Walk, a property that Pikul said “doesn’t get quite as much attention as it should.”

Additional plans for the Lamoille River Walk included an eventual feasibility study exploring the trail’s further expansion along town-owned property abutting the Lamoille River.

While members of Milton’s selectboard seemed generally supportive of the conservation commission’s plans, town officials expressed reservations with the conservation commission’s work around designing unique branding for Milton’s natural areas. Doing so without working directly with other town officials, selectboard members suggested, likely ran afoul of the town’s strict municipal branding policy.

“It’s good to see the improvements you’ve done with our natural areas,” the selectboard’s chairperson Darren Adams said. “I don’t want to be a policies guy, but we do have to follow our own rules.”

According to Pikul, the conservation commission was planning for a June ribbon-cutting ceremony to help celebrate the completion of handicap-accessible trails in the Milton Town Forest, as well as the accompanying wheelchair-accessible viewing platform looming above the Milton Marsh.

The ceremony, according to Pikul, would correspond with a weekend “BioBlitz” also sponsored by the conservation commission that would invite specialists to survey Milton’s natural areas for local plants and wildlife, and record their results through applications like iNaturalist.