By Marcelene Sutter

Fall foliage in different stages of the color change cycle in Wilmington, Vermont.
Fall foliage in different stages of the color change cycle in Wilmington, Vermont. Credit: Kimberly Vardeman

At some point in your life, someone has probably informed you that money does not grow on trees, and while this oft-stated truism does make a lot of sense, Megan Smith, Vermont’s commissioner of Tourism and Marketing, heartily disagrees. “I’d like to say that money falls from trees at this time of year,” Smith stated last week in an interview with NPR. What she is referring to is the lucrative business of “leaf peeping” in her state, which draws crowds of more than five times Vermont’s population every year.  These tourists come to Vermont for two purposes: to photograph leaves and to spend money, to the tune of $460 million annually.

These expenditures have made foliage tourism a booming and very competitive business, as Vermont must compete with other states to draw tourists to its trees. This has resulted in the creation of an interesting new job for Michael Snyder, Vermont’s commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation: leaf forecaster. Although the title is unofficial, the work is serious business. Snyder is responsible for scouting missions conducted on the back roads of Vermont’s densest forests looking for signs of color change in the foliage. Snyder describes his work as “part science, part guesswork,” as these kinds of predictions come from knowledge of the trees and the conditions that they are exposed to along with examination of early color-turning.

The Hapgood Pond Recreation Area on the Green Mountain National Forest displays its fall foliage.
The Hapgood Pond Recreation Area on the Green Mountain National Forest displays its fall foliage. Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As beautiful as these trees are, they are also extremely important to the ecosystems of the forests they inhabit. When Hurricane Irene hit in 2011, the riparian tree population in the White River area of the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont was decimated. This was a severe detriment to the health of the watershed and the aquatic species in the region because, without trees to provide shade, water temperatures rose to levels too high to be healthy living conditions for fish. For this reason, American Forests has made tree planting in the Green Mountain region a part of the Global ReLeaf campaign. To read more about the riparian tree planting project, check out this article, which appeared in the Fall 2013 edition of American Forests magazine.