Mission & Vision

Our mission is to:

• Observe, understand, and preserve forest ecosystem health;
• Practice forest-centered conservation that is wholistic and adaptive;
• Support careful management of local family forests for ecological, economic, and social benefits; and
• Foster a forest culture focused on community well-being, ecological resilience, and the quest of an optimal land ethic.

Our vision is mutually beneficial relationship between people and the forests in which we live. What does that look like? We explore this question in everything we do, and the answer evolves with our hands-on, land-centered efforts.

One thing we’re certain of is that it’s not all about the science. Western scientific investigation of forestry and forest ecology offers important and helpful insights, and we lean on those insights every day to support our latest recommendations on forestry practices. But the wise, humble, compassionate orientation of heart and mind are essential to the process and are often left out of the forest management conversation.

There are, as they say, many paths up Truth Mountain, and we’ve tapped into wise voices from varied paths for helpful insights into what mutually beneficial relationship between people and the rest of the community of life on Earth might look like.

In his epilogue to Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher points to the Four Cardinal Virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice as guiding principles for engaging with the world.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes the indigenous core practices of reciprocity and honorable harvest–in her words, “rules that govern our taking, shape our relationships with the natural world, and rein in our tendency to consume.”

In her book Green Buddhism, Stephanie Kaza, professor emerita of environmental studies at the University of Vermont, offers an Earth-centered revision of the Buddhist precepts, which embody the intention of mutually beneficial relationship, including: