Taghkanic Community Forest: A County First

This story reprinted with permission from The Columbia Paper.

By Deborah E. Lans

Published September 17, 2025 at 3:36 PM

Last updated September 29, 2025 at 11:45 AM

TAGHKANIC--The idea of the “commons” – natural or other resources accessible to all and self-governed – is not new, but there was no communally-governed forest in Columbia County until recently. After three years of planning, Taghkanic now hosts our first such area, 502 acres of hardwood forest that will be opened to the public in June 2026. 

The Taghkanic Community Forest is part of a forest corridor that extends across multiple states and that plays a crucial role in maintaining regional forest connectivity and support for wildlife; the corridor connects the Hudson Highlands, the Catskill Mountains and the Green Mountains in Vermont. In addition, the forest is part of the Taghkanic Headwaters region, supporting the health of the Taghkanic Creek which, in turn, supplies drinking water to Taghkanic, Hillsdale, Claverack, Copake and the City of Hudson.

In 2020 the Columbia Land Conservancy (CLC) began work on a Taghkanic Headwaters Conservation Plan, in consultation with numerous stakeholders including the affected communities. In 2022 the plan was issued. The principal goal of the plan, as CLC stated it, was “to protect forests for clean water and wildlife while meeting the needs of local communities and landowners.” The idea of creating a community forest in Taghkanic grew out of the conservation plan. 

In 2023, CLC began talks with a local landowner to acquire the forested property – a “typical hardwood forest with the usual issues of pests, invasives and excessive deer browsing” – that now constitutes the community forest. After three years of work, in July 2025 CLC acquired the land with the aid of state and private funds and financial assistance from Scenic Hudson. CLC project managers Heidi Bock and Patrick Knapp cite “tremendous support” from town officials and residents throughout the process. 

This summer, for example, more than 100 volunteers, including the entire Town Board, turned out for a massive tree-planting at the forest. Thirty different species and some 1,500 trees in all were planted (more than 200 alone by Town Supervisor Ryan Skoda and his son and daughter) including indigenous trees and species that are expected to better weather climate change, including pawpaw (typically a more southern tree) and Northern Pecans. A nearly three-acre “exclosure” – an enclosed area from which deer will be excluded – was built by volunteers, to see how various species fare if left undisturbed by deer browsing. The town’s Fire Department arrived with a tank of water for irrigation.

CLC will continue to own the Taghkanic Community Forest, but the forest will be managed by a 10-person committee of local residents, members of Conservation Advisory Committees or similar groups, topic experts and CLC representatives. The committee will develop guiding principles, goals, objectives and a Community Forest Management Plan. As the steward of the forest, the group is expected to work with CLC to implement strategies to build forest health and resiliency and support diverse recreational goals, monitor the property and provide educational opportunities. The committee members have not yet been (but are expected soon to be) selected. A forester to guide the process will be retained, and a natural resources inventory will be conducted.

A recent study of community forests by The Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit, described them as assets that “are increasingly recognized land-based economic development tools that deliver positive outcomes for residents, visitors and businesses located in their service areas...enhance quality of life, enrich cultural and spiritual heritage, strengthen economies and provide tangible economic value...because these resources are designed to provide access for amenities for recreation, education and tourism; offer forest-based products (e.g. timber, maple syrup and firewood); produce forest-based services (e.g. carbon sequestration, habitat, fire risk mitigation, and water quality); and foster economic development opportunities by bolstering the recreation economy and enhancing property value.”

Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel Prize winning professor of economics and political science and author of the seminal “Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action,” in 2008 wrote about the challenge of developing a sustainable society: “Our problem is how to craft rules at multiple levels that enable humans to adapt, learn and change over time so that we are sustaining the very valuable natural resources that we inherited so that we may be able to pass them on. I am deeply indebted to the indigenous people in the U.S. who had an image of seven generations being the appropriate time to think about the future. I think we should all reinstate in our mind the seven- generation rule. When we make really major decisions, we should ask not only what will it do for me today, but what will it do for my children, my children’s children, and their children’s children into the future.”

The “seven generation rule” was in fact derived from the Haudenosaunee constitution, and the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois confederation) were of course centered in New York State. Members of the Mahican nation, one of the six in the confederacy, were located (among other places in the county) in Taghkanic, and the town’s name is said to translate from Mahican to “the woods.” The Taghkanic Community Forest is an experiment in applying principles of communal, sustainable management locally. While it is the first community-managed forest in the county, CLC hopes that it will not be the last, and it is considering other possible acquisitions in the county.

More information about the Taghkanic Community Forest can be found on the town’s website, taghkanic.gov, and CLC’s website, columbialand.org. The Taghkanic Headwaters Conservation Plan, which contains detailed information about the area, can be found on CLC’s website under “plans.”       

Reporter Deborah Lans can be reached at deborahlans@icloud.com.