17 - Ethan Tapper

Forester, author, and social media educator Ethan Tapper joins the podcast to share his unconventional journey into forestry, from wilderness expeditions done for love to becoming a leading voice on ecosystem stewardship. He reflects on the dualities of forestry—how cutting trees or using tools like chainsaws can be acts of regeneration and love—while stressing the importance of communication, responsibility, and hope in caring for forests. Listeners will walk away with a deeper understanding of how to build more meaningful relationships with nature and how to embrace both nuance and action in environmentalism

Connect with Ethan on Instagram and his website.

Resources: 

Books & Authors

• How to Love a Forest — Ethan Tapper
• Nature’s Best Hope — Doug Tallamy
• Eager and Crossings — Ben Goldfarb
• The Hidden Forest: Biography of an Ecosystem — Jon Luoma
• Runes of the North — Sigurd Olson
• A Sand County Almanac — Aldo Leopold
• Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss — Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Sixth Extinction — Elizabeth Kolbert
• Works by E.O. Wilson

 Apps

• Merlin Bird ID from Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Seek (Android or Apple) from iNaturalist 

Organizations

• Audubon Vermont
• Vermont Land Trust
• Vermont Woodlands Association
• The Nature Conservancy

Terms mentioned: 

• Consulting Forester — A forester who works with private landowners to manage their forests sustainably.
• Service Forester / County Forester — A publicly funded forester who provides guidance and resources to landowners, conservation groups, and loggers (in Vermont, called county foresters).
• Production Forestry — A forestry approach focused on maximizing timber yield efficiently, often contrasted with ecological or conservation-focused forestry.
• Ecosystem Stewardship — The practice of managing forests (or other ecosystems) with a holistic focus on health, biodiversity, and long-term sustainability.
• Deep Environmentalism — A term Ethan coined to describe an evolved form of environmentalism that goes beyond preventing harm to actively healing and regenerating ecosystems.
• Introduced Invasive Plants — Non-native plants that spread aggressively, displacing native species and disrupting ecosystems.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kiersten: All right. Hello POD people. We're here today with Ethan Tapper. He's a forester, a digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest, the bittersweet work of Tending a Changing World. 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 each year. Ethan Works, writes, hunts, birds, and runs a small consulting forestry business from his home at Bear Island, which is his 175 acre working forest homestead, orchard and sugar Bush in Vermont. Ethan. We're so glad to have you today.

[00:00:40] Ethan: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:41] Kiersten: We'll jump right in. We would like to know about your journey to your current role or roles. 'cause you are a bit of a multi hyphenate there as the bio indicated. So could you tell us a little bit more about the professional hats you've worn in the past and what you do now and how you got from there to here?

[00:00:56] Ethan: Sure. I think a, a big part of my story is. Actually, you know, having a little bit of a different background than a lot of other nature writers that I know of. And, you know, folks that are like in the fields of environmental sciences, these natural sciences a lot of those people, if you hear them talk about it, and I'm sure there, there've been many of them here on your podcast.

A lot of times they're like, I was the nature kid always. I always knew this is what I wanted to do. This was always my thing. And I think that that really isn't the norm. In our field. That wasn't my experience at all. I did grow up in this teeny little village called Saxtons River, Vermont, about 300 people surrounded by forests.

So they were a big part of my life. But never did I think that they were ever gonna be an important part of my life. really what I remember wanting to do more than anything was just to, to get out of that little town. And what just ended up happening was that my, my high school girlfriend who was like the first big love of my life, she decided she wanted to go on this wilderness expedition and it was a five month expedition.

When she came back, she had had this like giant life changing experience. And I had not, and we weren't connecting and I was afraid we were gonna break up. so I said I gotta do something. I found out that the next expedition with that program left in two weeks. And I said, I'll do that. And it was a six month expedition where we skied north for three months and then we built a canoe and canoe back down.

I had never been winter camping before, didn't know how to ski, barely been canoeing, you know. It just was this big thing that I did for love, you know? And, you know ostensibly I also did it for no reason. The relationship didn't work out, but I did it for, turns out for, for a bigger reason, which is that it led me to this.

And after that, all I wanted to do was just like work in the woods. I ended doing wilderness guiding for a couple of years. I lived in this like uninsulated yurt with a fur bow floor. In the woods of Maine for a year. Learning like traditional improve skills. I worked with draft animals.

I was a draft horse logger, an apprentice, draft horse logger. then I got a letter. I had been, deferring from the University of Vermont and I had this scholarship and I got a letter from them that said I had to come back or I was gonna lose my scholarship. And I picked forestry on a whim.

I didn't know what it was. I literally just knew that it had the word forest in it. and I said, we'll try that. And it ended up being a really good fit. It goes on from there, you know, so I can tell you a little bit about my professional experience if you want me to. But that's basically what sort of led me to forestry in general.

[00:03:28] Kiersten: I will jump in to say we certainly wanna hear more, but a missed opportunity for a pun. You said you went on a whim, Um, one out on a limb to study 

[00:03:37] Ethan: there you go.

Yeah, I think that the the puns abound. My last name's also tapper, which is, you know, here in Vermont we, we tap trees for maple, sap, and make maple syrup out of them. So that's a big one. I actually remember when I was in college, that it never occurred to me that that was a pun. That was funny.

And in college I went into the dean's office and I was like, Hey, I'm Ethan Tapper. And she was like, oh, you a forestry student. Ha ha ha. And I was like, yeah, how'd you know that? And she was like, because Tapper ding-dong. Yeah. And it's never left me since. And I actually am a sugar maker and I have a sugar house here, so I like literally am a tapper now.

So anyway, so I studied forestry and one of the interesting things about having taken that time off is that even though I was only a couple years behind my peers in forestry school I felt like I was really behind those years. Mean a lot when you're young like that. and I was just like, you know what?

This is what we're doing. Let's go, let's, you know we're gonna be a forester. So I just really threw myself into it and really gave it my all. And when I was graduating, I was like, I wanna work as a forester. I, actually remember saying to myself, I'm going to work as a forester, and I just basically sent out a resume and a cover letter to every forestry company, and they all said no.

then one of them got back to me and said, yes. I ended up working on these sort of like industrial lands in the Adirondacks for a little while. I worked as a contractor and then as a consulting forester for a smaller consulting forestry company in Vermont, by the way, consulting forestry.

It's just private forestry. You're a private forestry. You work on private lands, and 80% of the lands in the eastern United States are privately owned. So that's what most foresters do, although we probably most people picture them like working on state forests and national forests on, on those federal and state lands.

Most foresters are working on private land and our consulting foresters in the eastern United States at least. And then I got a job in 2016 as what's called a service forester here in Vermont. We call them county foresters. You work for the state of Vermont. every state I think that has forests, has some version of this, but you're just a public resource.

And you're advising landowners and conservation organizations, loggers, foresters, on just how to take care of forests. And I did that for eight years until last June or June 24. And that's when I left to start my own consulting forestry company, which is called Bear Island Forestry. And to do all of the other stuff that I do now, which is this interesting mix of different things, which has become probably as much about communication you know, doing the social media thing, writing, doing public events as it is about traditional forestry. But I do traditional forestry and have a client base in that as well.

[00:06:10] Aparna: That is spanning so many different realms. So thank you so much, Ethan, for the backstory and really explaining kind of the landscape. I wanna just quick interjection with a fun anecdote. Your wilderness experience and the adventure trips that you went on in high school and in college. That was one of my jobs in undergrad as well.

I would take people out on weekend and week long, like backpacking, kayaking climbing trips. And know, I think I have a very similar experience, but you had very life changing, it just teaches you a lot of basic life skills that you don't get in another format. happy that you also had a very I guess, transformative experience.

Something that brought you out of a normal classroom and gave you a different perspective on things.

[00:06:51] Ethan: I especially did group trips with like high school kids, and we used to say that it was almost like when we took these groups out that we didn't have to do anything, that we just took them out there and then something magical happened and they came back and they were just like glowing.

It was a remarkable thing that happens when you just take people, especially young people into the woods.

[00:07:11] Aparna: Yeah, you learn how handy you can be and that you can in fact take care of yourself. It's a beautiful lesson.

[00:07:17] Ethan: Hmm.

[00:07:17] Aparna: going back to you being a forester, you are our inaugural forester on the show, so thank you for filling this hole. . And we wanted to know, since you're in this every single day, can you walk us through the ecosystem of forestry, of logging?

You've mentioned a couple common job titles in the industries, and what we'd wanna know now is how y'all interact with each other. Like, who do you talk to? What would I do as a forester?

[00:07:41] Ethan: It is different depending on where you are, and it is different depending even on. You know, the forester that you are. But in general, the, the reason that the job of Forrester exists is, you know, just because we recognize that there's an importance to having people that have this hyperspecialized knowledge and how to care for this one specific type of ecosystem.

And actually, historically Forrester has been a catchall term, which basically refers to any ecosystem manager like famously Aldo Leopold. Was a forester who at times worked in areas that had no trees. Right. Or, or very few. But, but basically, you know, as a consulting forester, what I do now is it's just in recognition of the fact that private landowners have this massive responsibility.

That they care for this, forest, this ecosystem, which is so many things and which really, you know, it's at times a, a privately owned resource, but that is producing massive public resources, right? That is contributing to us having a world that is functional and beautiful, that provides clean air and clean water, and protects our biodiversity and provides wildlife habitat and all of these other things.

And in the eastern United States, again. When 80% of those lands are privately owned, 80% of those benefits come back to private landowners who are people who do not have to have a degree or any training. No skills. You don't have to pass a test, you just get to be a forest landowner. and that's something that is the way that in the Eastern United States, we have this bulk of private land ownership.

It's something that is, I think, kind of neat and cool and interesting and also very scary because these resources that are being sustained and protected by those privately owned lands are precious and not optional resources, things that we actually need to have in order to live. So the reason a forester exists is to help those landowners who are not necessarily experts know how to deal with those resources.

I think that in other parts of the country and still sometimes in this part of the country, foresters will self-identify or be identified by the public primarily as resource managers. So it's our job to figure out how to cut trees, right? And harvest this resource that is wood in a way that is sustainable and responsible. in my experience here in Vermont, that is a, an identifier that is mostly held by, by more of like the old school crowd. And now most foresters identify basically as ecosystem steward. That it's our job just to care for these complex living systems.

And that, you know, one of the parts of that can be as we ask our ecosystems to provide all of these ecological things and also all of these cultural things you know, all of these, these ecological values and also all of these human values to harvest a resource. And actually sort of my specialty within, forestry is figuring out how we can leverage these existing systems like working with loggers, cutting trees to actually affect positive ecological change, to restore ecosystems using management, especially commercial forest management as a tool.

And it turns out you can totally do it right, and then when you start doing that, you're like, holy smokes. Can I be restoring an ecosystem at scale thousands and thousands of acres while producing a local renewable resource? And if you can do that, it's hard to imagine what would be better than that. But that said, you know, there are places, other parts of the country these places that produce a lot more timber than Vermont does.

Where I think if you talk to foresters, you know, and you'll say, what's your job? They'll be like, well, it's my job to produce timber as efficiently as possible to grow and to harvest successive generations of trees. I know that there is a role for that type of forestry.

We would call that production forestry probably. And in our world, producing wood at that kind of scale. And if you talk to production foresters, they'll say, well, you know, the work that we do allows people like you in Vermont to do this. Fancy schmancy, fussy ecological forestry work that you do. And they're right.

And that's true. So there, there is a role for that as well. But for me it's about not managing timber as a resource, but thinking about these ecosystems in a more holistic way and leveraging that resource to affect positive ecological change.

[00:11:53] Kiersten: First of all, there are so many directions to follow up though there, but thank you for naming so many job titles and explaining a little bit about what each. Does or do and how that might vary. I think that nuance is really important to expose people that might say, I wanna be a forester. You know? Well, what kind of forester do you want to be and what does that mean to you?

You have a lot in the book and we have a lot of questions later about things from the book, but I know you mentioned sort of the duality of maybe cutting a tree down is the best thing that you can do in a certain situation.

So again, exploring that nuance I think is really great to have our listeners understand. Maybe you are a logger, but that doesn't mean you're someone that hates forests and just doesn't care about trees and wants to cut them all down. That can be an act of grace and regeneration.

I also love in the book how much you talk about duality. I know there's a section where you are talking about a chainsaw and how it can be kind of a killer for trees. 

[00:12:46] Ethan: Mm-hmm. 

[00:12:48] Kiersten: So I think it's interesting 'cause social media also is something that can have some negative impacts, but it can have a lot of positive impacts as well.

We were connected because I saw one of your reels and it was so informative. I immediately went to your page to learn more. That's when we saw the book and reached out. Given that there are so many privately held forests, it's great that you're spreading information through your business and your social channels so that those potential landowners can see this other way.

A fun question about reels for you. 

[00:13:17] Ethan: Mhmm. 

[00:13:17] Kiersten: What would you tell people like us who love taking walks outside, about tree identification, do you have any tips besides, apps like going on Google Lens and using technology?

[00:13:28] Ethan: I have taught tree identification before 'cause it is such a cool entryway. I'm a birder and it's like, it's like learning birds where like you learn these things and then you see more. You know, like you go from seeing just trees and you're like, oh, this is all these different species.

My tree identification philosophy is that less is more. You pick up these field guides and they just have 200 species of trees in them, and every trait of every one of those trees, the bark, the leaves, the seeds, the flowers, the buds, the twigs, you know, all these different things.

I just think that that's unhelpful. I think that that's more than we need to know. I think that in general, we need to take opportunities to, number one, if you go on a walk with someone who actually knows their trees, and if, let's say it's an area that you walk off in, have them narrow down to like the five to 10 trees that are actually there.

Right. They're like, this is mostly these five tree species which is usually what it'll be. and so it narrows it down. So you're not looking at every single tree that could possibly be there. You're like, it's mostly one of these five trees. And then have them explain to you or read about not every single trait of every one of those trees, but just the trait that they see that allows them to identify that tree species.

So there's actually there's a book , a beginner's guide to recognizing Trees of the Northeast. And, he sort of talked about this concept where it's like people they, you know, they never learned how to identify trees. They just grew up in the woods or whatever, and they don't identify anything.

They recognize these trees. How do they recognize them? And if you get them to actually bear down on like what the individual trait is that allows you to recognize the tree, that's the only trait you need. Right off the bat, it's just that one that lets you actually do that. Or maybe with some of these tree species, it's one or, or two.

don't worry about every single thing. So I'm out, I'm looking out my window right here. I don't know if you have those where you are, but we have white birch, AKA paper birch, and it is the only tree that has white bark that peels in these broad horizontal sheets. If you see a tree with white bark that peels in broad horizontal sheets, it is white birch, and there's nothing else that you need to know about it.

As a beginner, that's all you need to know. And then you move on to yellow birch, which also peels horizontally, but in these like little strips of golden foil and has this golden metallic bark, it's the only tree species with golden metallic bark that strips in these little golden shreds of foil.

That's my strategy is then those people ask me all these other questions about it, and I'll say, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that right now. Recognize the tree, and then you can start adding on all these other traits about it.

[00:15:59] Aparna: I love that to reframe it from identify a tree to just recognize a trait.

You mentioned being a birder. Out of curiosity, do you play wingspan?

[00:16:09] Ethan: I have played wingspan. I have not played it a lot of times, but I understand that that people love that game.

[00:16:16] Aparna: There's a cult like following and Yeah, I, I was just wondering if you'd done it

[00:16:19] Ethan: Well, so I actually have some friends who are, are not birders and like, don't, you know, they can't identify birds by song or necessarily by appearance, but they'll know like how many eggs they have per clutch from wingspan.

[00:16:33] Aparna: Honestly, Ethan, you're describing me. Yes, we played it a lot in grad school. There was Wingspan Wednesdays, you know, maybe an idea for the future. If you ever wanna make a tree based board game, you have a cult like following from wingspan to take

[00:16:47] Ethan: you go.

[00:16:47] Aparna: them the

[00:16:48] Ethan: Well, I will tell you that you know, speaking of just different ways to get into these things, I am a member of, like a new generation of birders and I'm sort of a proof of concept which is that I'm, I'm probably one of the first really serious birders, certainly in my community. To have learned birding primarily from the Merlin app, the Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which identifies bird songs for you because what, what I found was that I wanted to learn birds, but it's really hard to learn out in the world.

You either have to, like, you hear a bird singing and you either have to have a birder there who knows the, the song and tells you what it is, or you gotta go and find it. And even though I work in the woods, you know, all day long, I was always alone. And I didn't have time to go find that bird. And when that app came out, it suddenly allowed me to be like learning birds and affirming what I knew all the time.

So I don't just do, I don't just hold it up and I'm being like, look at it and be like, oh, I guess these birds are here. I'm like, I think it's a red start and I hold it up and I'm like, yes, it's a red start and then I'm learning. And then basically now I almost never use it.

[00:17:51] Aparna: Nice. Yeah. Quizzing yourself and getting better at it. I like that

[00:17:54] Kiersten: Now you're describing me with plants. I love going to botanical gardens things are labeled and I'm like, I think that that's yarrow? And then I get close and read the sign and it's a yes, but not for very many plants.

[00:18:06] Ethan: Yeah, and I think with birders, with more old school birders, I think they were really concerned. Just because they won't, you know, they learn to, to id birds a certain way. And so to think about these, these shortcuts or, what's being lost, right? And, and not having that had that same experience.

Now I think most of 'em, one of 'em, an old school birder told me last year, he said, this is the biggest thing to happen to birding since binoculars. Which is, you know, in the, that's a big, it's a big thing to say. And the other one that I use, I find myself now, you know, I do these walks and talks all over the country, and I end up in these places that have different plants.

And I use the SEEK app by iNaturalist all the time to identify plants. I don't think it's something that we want to use to replace our knowledge of plants and our knowledge of birds. Let's think about how we can use these tools to, you know, create new generations of naturalists and use them as learning tools so that we can know these ecosystems even better.

[00:19:06] Aparna: Supplement what we have and grow with it. bringing us back to your book a little bit, we wanted to ask you a few more questions about that and. Kirsten has finished the entire book. I'm about halfway through so far, and there are so many beautiful excerpts that we'd wanna share, but to avoid becoming an audio book, we have narrowed it down to our favorites. But before we go there, tell us more about becoming an author. Has this always been something that you wanted to do, or was this something that came about from being in forestry?

[00:19:37] Ethan: How it came about was that I really just, there were things that I wanted to say and that I needed to say. I mean, you mentioned, you know, this, this seemingly oppositional reality, right? That you can like, love trees and, and cut trees, care about ecosystems and change them. And it's an interesting thing about this is that this is something that fundamentally people who work in ecosystems and who have dedicated their lives to them understand.

Right. one of the interesting things about it, you know, I actually went on the same journey myself when I went into forestry school coming out of this wilderness guiding thing. I was like. I know the only relationship that people should have with ecosystems, and I know exactly how we should do it, is this very like leave no trace, hands off kind of approach.

then when I went into forestry school, what I learned, was actually a very jarring experience. I got to know these ecosystems a lot more deeply, and what I learned is that these ecosystems that I thought of as being these perfect, pristine, utopian places were actually deeply degraded.

That they were actually deeply unhealthy, struggling with all of these wounds of the past, these threats and stressors of the present, this volume of threats and stressors that we refer to as global change, which is completely unprecedented in their evolutionary history and moving into this future that promises more challenges and more changes than ever before.

And that actually, if we just left them alone, they weren't gonna be okay. That this world was not gonna be okay. And suddenly I was like, what? You know, what can we do to help them? And it just so happens, and this is sort of what the book is about, is this idea that, you know, the only way to love an ecosystem is to leave it alone, is something that only works in so far as we don't really understand what's happening.

It only works in so far as, we're skimming over the surface and we're just very superficially interacting with these ecosystems. But when we go deep, we start to see actually what's happening and actually what our responsibility is in this moment to care for these, forests and other ecosystems that are so precious and the millions of species that inhabit this earth that are irreplaceable.

I really wanted to tell that story, and I just. I was having this experience over and over and over again of, of how often my work was being misunderstood. And so I just started to write. And what happened is that I figured out that the time when my brain was really creative and productive for writing was the first hour that I'm awake in the which for me is five to 6:00 AM and I just started writing from five to 6:00 AM every day.

I did that for six years. I had a pretty good draft after six years. Found a publisher for the book and I was like, this thing's gonna be out in no time. And they said it'll be out in two years. And then that brought us to September of 24. it feels like now that it happened kind of precipitously, but really, you know, what I've been doing for years is, is working on this, communication, you know, especially as a service forester, I did hundreds of public events, like 300 public events and walked in the woods with thousands of landowners.

And I had this, this realization that the way we talk about stuff matters. You know, I would like say something to somebody and you could see in, in their eyes, they didn't get it, it didn't resonate. It wasn't gonna make 'em do anything. and you would say that same thing in a little bit of a different way and you would just see they got it.

so then I started to see every time I was walking in the woods with landowners or whoever, that it was like, practice. That I was just practicing figuring out how to communicate in a way that would, grab people and, and resonate with them and, and change their behavior, you know?

what the book is in large part is, the sort of stuff that I learned from communicating as is my social media, from sort of teaching myself to communicate in that way. And then also that combined with this just really magical time of day that very early in the morning is. When I read the book, I think of it as being very much of that time when when the veil is thin. It just happened that as I was writing it, it took shape and I realized that the story I really wanted to tell was a love story. I wanted people to understand how much I care about these ecosystems intrinsically, how I've given my life to them.

And I would do it again and then to follow along as I take all these actions to care for them. That would not be what most people would think of as acts of love. To cut a tree. To kill a deer. At that point, hopefully people would be forced to accept at least the possibility that those things that were so difficult to understand were not antithetical to my love for ecosystems, but were actually the most powerful expressions of that love.

[00:24:03] Kiersten: Well that communication, honing through all of those events and everything else, it certainly 

[00:24:07] Ethan: Oh.

[00:24:09] Kiersten: and I have chatted back and forth in text to one another about just how beautiful the writing is. And I do wanna read a small excerpt just because I think the listeners need to understand what we're talking about here. But also you guys don't have to take our word for it. Part of what drew me to immediately purchase the book besides the very informative reel, was the recommendations that you have. Some of my favorite authors, doug Tami, the Nature's Best Hope book is also one of my favorite books. So the fact that he was in your Forward Bill McKibbon huge name in sustainability, Ben Goldfarb, all of those were like, oh wow.

Like this guy. This is one I'm gonna wanna read. So without further ado, for the listeners, a quick paragraph that really kind of describes, I think a bit of this duality and how Ethan has taken action that maybe seem antithetical so. page 71, if you purchase your own copy and wanna follow along, he writes, the loggers were not alone everywhere.

People used their power to exploit the earth's damaged ecosystems rather than to save them to seek their own freedom at the expense of their children's. As the ecosystems of the world were degraded and destroyed, people who loved forests vilified their own power and technology, the chainsaws and the skidders, their human nature as things that were inherently harmful.

In fact, all of these things were capable of goodness beyond measure. Though the people were the biosphere's greatest threat, they were also its greatest hope. And then skipping a little bit again, not to become a audio book he does write, they fail to understand that their choice is not if they wanted to have a relationship with Ecosystems, their choice was what they wanted that relationship to be. So I think that really just, so well said. There's not much I can add to it. But I do have a question to pose to you, which is, do you have advice around how to better understand forests? Do you have any advice to people who want to do the right thing and choose a more beneficial relationship? 

[00:26:04] Ethan: I've had this happen a lot because now that, the book and my social media goes out to people all across the world. Forests are different everywhere. You know, not every single thing that I talk about is exactly true for every forest everywhere. Forests are these really hyper localized ecosystems and every place is different. What I've really started, to appreciate is the fact that we have this conservation community. So especially, this was true when I was working for the state of Vermont. It was like, we were on the same team.

It was us in the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and we had these partner organizations like Audubon, Vermont and the Vermont Land Trust and Vermont Woodlands Association and Vermont covers. You know and the Nature Conservancy and like all of these different organizations that were, filled with these people who had dedicated their lives to understanding these nuances of how we care for ecosystems in this place.

one of the funny things about it was that the, the discourse among that, conservation community was always like, we can't get anybody to consume the resources that we put out, to sign up for our email list, to follow us on social media, to show up for our events to engage with us.

a lot of times when I'll be in some other part of the country and someone asks me that question, I'll be like, good news! those people, those organizations are already there and they've been waiting for you. They've been waiting to hear from you. there are organizations like that. Your local land trusts, conservation organizations of all different kinds that can really help put you in the right place to both understand your ecosystem better and then also to to care for it better and to understand what actions you can take, even if you don't own any part of it.

[00:27:43] Aparna: We've talked a lot about how there's a lot for us to do better, to become really good stewards, and some things that we're already doing really well that help us preserve the natural landscape that we love. So. With your imagination goggles, then your imagination hat, what would utopia look like to you? How would do we coexist with landscapes in an optimal world? Pretend you have all the power in the world to make whatever change you see fit.

[00:28:09] Ethan: Hmm. Oh, that's an interesting one. one of the interesting things, you know, and I sort of talk about this in the book. with this land, you know, a lot of the book is, is based around my land. This forest that I call Bear Island. And the interesting thing about Bear Island is that when I bought it now eight years ago, it was just this forest that had every problem that a forest could have.

It was degraded, it had been exploited, and all the trails were washed out and eroding and filled these deep ruts and it was. 30 acres of pure introduced invasive plant infestation, deer overpopulation, covered in trash, like all this stuff. And really, as I've been willing to make these compromises and to do things like cut trees and kill deer and use diesel equipment and, and all this different stuff.

I've been able to effect a profound change in this ecosystem over a really short period of time. And it's made me realize that in many cases we actually have the ability to save ecosystems with existing technology, with existing resources. Many of these problems only lack the willpower to do so, and the willingness to make some of these big sacrifices.

And also just to, to use our resources for this purpose. I think that an interesting thing about, about visioning a utopian future which is, by the way, a question I've never been asked before is that it forces us to think about the world that we're actually trying to build and is the world we're trying to actually build the world that I feel like people vision so often, which is a world where you have humans over here and nature over here.

And you know, we just leave the thing we call nature alone and let it do its thing and we don't harm it. And of course that's not true. You know, of course we want to live in a world where we are integrated with this beautiful biosphere and these beautiful species and this beautiful ecosystems. And we want to live in a world where we are doing so in a way that is, is not just not degrading this beautiful world, but which is actually regenerative, right, and generative, building a better world for future generations of people. this is the thing that I talk about in the last chapter of the book especially, and that I hold really as something that's really important to me, which is that our ultimate goal is not to make this world not any worse than it is right now for future generations of people.

Our goal is to make it better. the way that we do that is not in every case, by just leaving it alone. It's by doing things to make it better, to actually take action to build a better world. In my new book, which is it'll come out next year or something I talk about this concept, this term that I invented, and then I'm trying to tell everybody about, which is this concept of deep environmentalism.

I came up with this idea actually out of thinking about the term deep truth, which is something that I talk about and write about a lot, which is just this idea that if you look deeply enough at something, both that thing and its opposite are also true. It's kind of like a heady concept, but it's basically, I think of it as, being able to accept that that two things can be true at the same time.

But deep environmentalism is the concept that. I was looking at what we think of as environmentalism, which is really belongs to a different generation. You know, it belongs to the first Earth Day and Silent Spring and Greenpeace and tree sitting and what it's really about is stopping the wanton exploitation and degradation of this world out of that have come so many powerful and important things.

And, and we wanna show so much gratitude to that movement and to the people who, affected those changes. And also in this moment, we need to evolve our definition of what we think of as environmentalism, to be inclusive of, we don't want to just stop doing the bad things. We wanna start doing the good things.

Right. We want to recognize that we have a role to play, not just in, not harming ecosystems, but also in healing ecosystems. And a part of that, and this is getting to your question finally, a part of that is actually asking this question in a deeper way. How do we live here? How do we live on this planet?

Where do we get stuff? Where do things come from? How do we build these abundant lives where we all have food to eat? And water to drink and where we all live in warm, dry houses and where we all have clothes. not one of those things except for maybe clean water can be attained without making some sacrifices, right?

One thing I'll say about agriculture, everybody loves agriculture, right? And everybody likes to hate on forestry. The worst managed forest is still from an ecological perspective better than the best managed agricultural field. Right? we sustain those things because it's a compromise that we need to make.

We need to eat, we want to eat this beautiful food, and we wanna have these beautiful meals with our communities, right? And we want to have access to all of the culture that's wrapped around food and the way that food helps us gather with each other. Those compromises do not mean that that thing is bad.

It's just part of the deal, and I think that we do a better job making those compromises and sustaining ourselves in these ecosystems. When we look at those compromises, straight in the face instead of what we do right now, which is that we will just pretend that nothing comes from anywhere and we can just displace the impacts of our consumption onto peoples and ecosystems somewhere else that don't have the privilege to say, not in my backyard.

We think that that is sustainable, but it is not, and actually, the radical thing to do is to bring that stuff back here, even if it means we gotta cut some beautiful trees. When I think about the perfect world, it's one where we are living with these ecosystems.

We are healing these ecosystems, we are sustaining these ecosystems and we're also being realistic and clear-eyed about the compromises that we make to sustain ourselves and the things we wanna sustain and try to do so in the best way that we can.

[00:33:53] Kiersten: Complete agree. There's just so much wisdom there. To pick your brain a little more, there is a section in the book where you describe yourself fighting Barberry in a patch on bear Island, your 175 acres, and at the end you say it felt futile in a way.

In so many words. You say your back is sore. You look up, you realize there's acres and acres more, and you've cleared like maybe a half acre. What is there to do? And I found that so relatable as just like an environmentalist in general. You can expand the metaphor to many things when you're talking about ecological scale issues and world scale issues.

But you wanna make a difference. And so you do your little part, but there are times where you stand up and your back hurts and you're like. 

[00:34:32] Ethan: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:34] Kiersten: made a dent. but another beautiful theme of the book was accepting change. So accepting that things, they're not static and change is the only constant. So, how do you reconcile that accepting change. One big change we're all facing now is climate change it can be tricky in that space and I think you certainly have wisdom exist in that space.

So what would you say, how do you keep yourself hopeful and deal with that? 

[00:34:59] Ethan: One of the hard things , is understanding what changes we accept and what changes we do not accept. Right. So in this moment that you're describing, that was a moment when I was trying to control that Japanese barberry by hand, like by pulling it up by the roots, and it was clear to me that it just wasn't gonna work, right?

And so in that moment I had to be like, well, is that something where I'm like, well, what I'm trying to do isn't gonna work and so I give up. Is that something I can give up on? And, By the way, with these introduced invasive plants, it is not if you have any interest in sustaining ecosystems.

And so I have to change, right? And I'm like, now I have to make a compromise in that chapter. please do, if you're listening to this, please do read that chapter to understand the journey that is required to, comprehend how this could be remotely possible. But what the answer was, is that I had to use herbicide.

Right, which is actually something that, our entire conservation community has been on a journey with, and figured out how to do in a way that's, actually really profound and life-giving and important to ecosystems with respect to these introduced plants. But you know, there are times when we're like, this is too hard.

Right. It doesn't have anything to do with how important that thing is to do. It only means one thing, which is that it's gonna be hard. and I think we need to think about when what we're doing really isn't working. How are we gonna change? and I think that there are other elements of change that we just have to accept and that can be accepted and, and that aren't a big deal.

And the difference between what we accept and what we don't accept is incredibly nuanced. I think that a lot of people with, introduced plants have decided that there's something that they just want to accept 'cause it's too hard and, and they shouldn't be. Right? And it's just something that we need to change the way that we think about 'em.

But, I've started to feel like one of my jobs is to be like a carrier of hope because hope is a self-fulfilling prophecy. if people don't feel hopeful, they don't do anything. If you feel out of hope, it just, takes the wind outta your sails and it makes you give up.

And if we feel hopeful, and if we have people that make us feel hopeful it gives us actual reason to feel hope, because then those people suddenly start doing stuff and in this way it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. so I've, started to believe that that's one of my roles. I mean, I was recently on Cape Cod, you know, they have these endemic beach forests, American beach which is like a hundred percent beach trees. And now there's this pathogen called beach leaf disease, which is a different one than the one that's mentioned in the book. Beach Bark Disease. Beach leaf disease, which is just killing all the beach trees. In a forest that's, basically a hundred percent beach trees. Thousands and thousands and thousands of acres. you know, and the people are just sort of like, well, it's over. I'm like, no, no, it's not. And the reason it's not is because it's not. And the reason that it's not is because it can't be right.

Like what other choice do we have? But to move forward from this moment and to do our best. And I think that another thing that can be a barrier as we try to move forward and to figure out the changes that we need to make and the changes that maybe we need to accept and all these other things is is just understanding that it's a process. We want to have the right answer and we just don't. we never will. And even if we did, it might be wrong tomorrow, right? And so what we really want to do is to be humble and to try our best. To learn, to adapt, is the goal. The goal is not to adapt until we have a perfect solution.

The goal is to keep trying as hard as we can to sustain these ecosystems, to sustain our lives, and to sustain this world We are not gonna get it right all the time. And what getting it right even means will change and will be debatable and we'll get it right in some ways and wrong in other ways.

And that does not mean that we have failed. So I, think that as people who care about this kind of stuff, that's a, an expectation that we need to set. Is that the goal? The goal is to move forward. The goal is not to to be right all the time.

[00:38:45] Aparna: That is really beautifully said Ethan. I appreciate that. Speaking of hope and inspiration and wanting to inspire listeners ourselves as well we like to share good resources, any books, documentaries, podcast, newsletters, things that maybe you found useful that have also inspired you towards action. So would love to hear what you might have to recommend to us and the listeners.

[00:39:08] Ethan: Sure. Any of Doug Tami's work is great. By the way, you mentioned Doug, he endorsed the book and when I sent him this book to endorse, or my publisher did, he did not have any idea who I was, and he read it and endorsed it anyway. Any, any of Doug's work?

Any of Ben Goldfarb's work, who's another endorser of the book, Ben is a genius. He's just amazing at figuring out how to just like pack all this information together in a way that goes down easy. He's actually an environmental journalist but his understanding of these concepts is, is fascinating.

He wrote this one book called Eager About Beavers, and his newer book is called Crossings which just came out on paperback. there's a remarkable book, I don't even know how many people really know about this book and I don't really even know how I discovered it, but there's this book called The Hidden Forest Biography of An Ecosystem by John Loma, which is about this multidisciplinary group of scientists that got together to study this one area, the Andrews Experimental Forest in the Pacific Northwest.

from geomorphologists and, entomologists and, every scientist you can imagine all getting together to really try to like, instead of being each in their own little tunnel, to study these things in a way that, that truly was multidisciplinary. That book is an incredible work of providing really good.

ecological information to a popular audience in a way that a lot of other books have not. I've got a whole bookshelf full of 'em. One off the wall recommendation that I'll give you is that I think, I think my book sort of like is somewhere between like environmental communication and nature writing maybe? And one of my favorite nature writer ever is this guy Sigar Olson, and he wrote this one book called Ruins of the North, that is very special to me. And that's just about sigar canoeing around, thinking about life basically.

A Sand County Almanac, braiding sweetgrass, gathering moss actually was a really cool book for me to, to sort of understand mosses a little better, which is something that I really hadn't, thought about that much. The Sixth Extinction by elizabeth Colbert is a pretty amazing resource.

One of my heroes is, the biologist, the Mem Onologist EO Wilson. His stuff is pretty amazing. there's a lot of good stuff out there.

I'm reading a lot of bird stuff right now. I'm reading this one book right now that's called Red Tails in Love, which is about birding in Central Park. Basically. And about these, these, these red-tailed hawks. Yeah. Yeah. And how to love a forest.

[00:41:35] Kiersten: Those are great recommendations and a chance for another pun. We're hawking 

[00:41:40] Ethan: Yeah, that's right.

[00:41:44] Kiersten: Ethan, there's so much more that we could chat about. We're gonna have a hard time cutting this episode down, so we will cut ourselves off here. But thank you so much for your time for responding to our random DM. As someone that you did not know he gave credit to.

Doug. We'll give credit to you for doing the same things. I am so excited for our listeners to hear this episode and we appreciate everything that you've shared.

[00:42:05] Ethan: is truly my pleasure. Thanks for having me.