While constructing a timber frame barn, Ethan Tapper suffered a horrible accident, permanently losing the sight in his left eye.
As Tapper grappled with this life-altering loss, he was forced to come to terms with his newfound lack of depth perception. “I could no longer cross the river jumping from stone to stone,” says Tapper.
While Tapper eventually learned to cope with his loss of vision, his experience can be viewed as a metaphor for resilience and adaptation. Like Aldo Leopold, he would go on to become a forester, a forest steward, and an author writing How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World.
Of Tapper’s new book, award-winning author Ben Goldfarb says, “If Aldo Leopold were a 21st century Vermont forester with one good eye and a contemporary understanding of power and privilege, this might be the sort of book he’d write.”
In addition to working as a forester with public lands and private landowners, Tapper is restoring Bear Island, his 175-acre conserved homestead, orchard, sugarbush and working forest in Vermont. His first-hand experiences at Bear Island have transformed his conservation philosophy and his way of seeing land management. His overarching message: that humans can and must become a keystone species, taking radical action to protect ecosystems and all the species that rely on them–ourselves included.
“Once, I envisioned a better world as a landscape of boundless ecosystems, unaffected by people,” Tapper writes. “Now, I see a better world as one where humans are actors, not bystanders, where we are brave and humble and imbued with responsibility.”
Tapper approaches his efforts to restore ecosystem biodiversity and health with humility, sometimes wondering if he is doing the right thing despite his extensive experience in forestry. He has learned to view trees as part of a larger community and has come to understand that humans have a role to play in helping the community move forward. Tapper writes, “the cutting of a tree can be an act of responsibility, an expression of compassion.”
Tapper asks us to recognize that humans cannot choose whether or not we impact ecosystems. “Our only choice is, what do we want our impact to be?”
The Hoosier National Forest, in the hills of south-central Indiana, offers the public rolling hills and back-country trails that range over 205,000 acres. In his supervisor role with the US Forest Service, Mike Chaveas not only manages the forest; he also works with communities and partner organizations to develop a shared vision of stewardship focused on restoring, maintaining, and interpreting the cultural and natural resources of the Hoosier.
The forests we have today are a product of how people used and treated this land in the past, and the challenges that are hitting us now and will continue or intensify in the future–droughts, floods, extreme weather, invasive species and other threats–will affect our forests and we can see those changes happening today,” says Chaveas.
“We really do not want to take our forests for granted and we shouldn’t assume that just by leaving them alone, unmanaged, that they’ll continue to provide the great benefits that we all rely on, or that conditions will improve.”
One crisis facing Hoosier National Forest is the increasing incidence of oak wilt and oak decline. Oaks are keystone species that are disproportionately important to our wildlife and also to our ecosystem services, which the public relies upon. Oaks are crucial to watershed protection, for example, which ensures quality drinking water.
“The long-term health of the forest ecosystem and its ability to provide the many things we expect and need from it, including diverse wildlife habitat, clean water, and sustainable recreational opportunities…” are what Chaveas says are at the core of the decisions he makes as Forest Supervisor.
In working with local communities, Chaveas is sometimes asked why it’s not possible to let nature take its course to fix existing problems. Chaveas points out that the Hoosier National Forest’s declining oak and associated plants and animals flourished when low-intensity ground fires occurred in the region over thousands of years as Indigenous peoples occupied these areas and made deliberate use of fire to shape their landscape and resources. Wildlife including bison and massive transitory populations of passenger pigeons are gone from the landscape as well, while disturbances like windstorms and tornadoes continue to affect the land. Many of the US Forest Service’s present-day management actions aim to mimic past disturbances to return ecological variety and greater resilience to our ecosystems.
The Hoosier National Forest, like other U.S. Forest System lands, faces challenges due to human activities and only a limited and often fragmented public land base in which to work. A balanced approach that includes both Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science is critical to ensure the long-term sustainability of the forest ecosystem.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation was founded in 1982 with a mission to foster the Land Ethic® through the legacy of Aldo Leopold, awakening an ecological conscience in people throughout the world.
"Land Ethic®" is a registered service mark of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, to protect against egregious and/or profane use.
