"How to Love a Forest" Speaker Series with Forester and Author, Ethan Tapper

What does it mean to love a forest?

 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.

Ethan Tapper is a forester, digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. For more than a decade, Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. His message of relationship, responsibility and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, his social media channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, and the dozens of walks, talks and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year. In his personal life, Ethan works, writes, hunts, birds at Bear Island, his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard and sugarbush, runs three small businesses – Bear Island Forestry, Bear Island Consulting and Bear Island Maple – and plays in his 10-piece punk band, The Bubs.