Learn & Network

In this talk, Ethan Tapper, a forester, bestselling author and content creator from Vermont, will draw from his work as a forester and his book How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World to discuss what it means to care for forests and other ecosystems at this moment in time. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species’ incredible power to heal rather than to harm? How do we reach toward a better future? In a time in which many believe that “protecting” ecosystems means protecting them from ourselves, Ethan argues that humans must take action to help ecosystems heal and to move into a more abundant future, and that to do so is an act of care and compassion – of love.

Ethan’s message is at once compassionate and pragmatic, clear-eyed and hopeful, sobering and inspiring – a powerful new vision for how we can build a world that works for all of its ecosystems and all of its people.

$15.00 Webinar Fee (free for WeConservePA members)

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Presenter

Ethan Tapper | Forester, Bestselling Author, Content Creator

Ethan Tapper is a forester, bestselling author, and content creator from Vermont. His first book — How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World — was published in September, 2024.

Ethan grew up in Saxtons River, a rural village in Vermont’s Connecticut River Valley. After graduating high school, Ethan accepted a scholarship to attend the University of Vermont, but — still unsure about what he wanted to study — left after two semesters to go on a six-month wilderness expedition in Vermont and New Hampshire. Following this transformative experience, Ethan spent the next few years living and working in the woods: working as a wilderness guide, living on a primitive homestead and apprenticing with a draft horse logger. Ethan eventually returned the University of Vermont to study forestry, completing his degree in 2012. After graduating from UVM, Ethan worked as a consulting forester on forests in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Maine, before becoming the Chittenden County Forester in 2016.

As the Chittenden County Forester for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, Ethan advised private landowners, municipalities, conservation organizations, foresters and loggers on the responsible stewardship of privately-owned forestland, managed Community Forests, administered Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal (“Current Use”) program in the County, wrote a monthly column for community newspapers and a quarterly column in Northern Woodlands magazine and led hundreds of public events. In this role, Ethan received numerous awards and distinctions — including being named the Northeast-Midwest State Foresters Alliance’s Forester of the Year, and the American Tree Farm Systems National Outstanding Inspector (forester) of the Year. Ethan left this role to start his own consulting forestry business, Bear Island Forestry, in 2024.

In 2017, Ethan bought the 175-acre forest in Bolton, Vermont that he now calls “Bear Island.” When he bought Bear Island, it had, as he says: “every problem that a forest could have.” As Ethan worked to help this forest heal, Bear Island helped him crystalize many of the ideas that would eventually become How to Love a Forest. Today, Ethan spends countless hours working at Bear Island, performing the countless bittersweet and beautiful acts required to help this forest “reach towards wholeness again.” While he once saw Bear Island as a symbol of “everything that was wrong with the world,” now, he sees it as “a symbol of what is possible, a symbol of hope.” Ethan donated a conservation easement on Bear Island in 2022 — protecting this forest forever.