• van den Berg, Abby
  University of Vermont
  

Maple syrup production is a traditional practice within the Northern Forest that generates jobs, provides income, and helps maintain the traditional working landscape of the region. The profitability and long-term economic sustainability of maple syrup production depend entirely on the sustainability of annual sap extraction from trees. To be sustainable, annual sap collection must not remove or damage more wood than can be replaced by annual growth, or extract a portion of sugar resources large enough to reduce growth rates and hinder the replenishment of functional wood. Maple producers follow ‘tapping guidelines’, a traditional set of best practices for sap collection, to ensure their practices meet these requirements. Now, however, modern sap collection equipment and practices facilitate at least twice the volume of sap extraction per tree than was possible with the technology used when the existing guidelines were developed, and evidence suggests even greater extraction rates are possible. Thus, the existing tapping guidelines may not be a sustainable approach for collecting sap with these ‘high-yield’ practices.