The Practice of Ecological Forestry
Seeking Diversity, Balance, and Adaptation in the Woods
Editor’s Note: One of my earliest educational collaborations at the Harvard Forest came through working with classes and interns that accompanied forester Ross Morgan down from Sterling College in Craftsbury, Vermont. I learned much about forests and forestry from those interactions and ultimately was fortunate to enlist Ross in managing the 700 acres of woodland my family owns in northern Vermont. Forty years later it has been a delight to work with Rick Morrill, Ross’s son-in-law, on this article and to continue my education. - David Foster
I pursued a career in forestry because I believe a society that uses natural resources has a responsibility to manage them for the benefit of both current and future generations. In the case of forest resources, that responsibility involves acknowledging that 1) Forests have intrinsic value independent of our needs and wants, and 2) A sustainable human society must be built upon the foundation of stable forest ecosystems. We need forests, but the truth is that they don't really need us.
Forest ecosystems are defined by many interconnected factors. A century ago, Aldo Leopold wrestled with the complex nature of the forest, saying that the forester…
“…lifts the veil from a biota so complex, so conditioned by interwoven cooperations and competitions, that no man can say where utility begins or ends…”
Stand following irregular shelterwood harvest. Photo © Rick Morrill
How are we to steward forests and meet human needs without disrupting the integrity of the ecosystems? This should feel like a daunting question. For me the answer lies in the practice of ecological forestry. This branch of the larger profession places Leopold’s “interconnected biota” at the center of its assumptions and goals. Importantly, forestry is an active endeavor and requires that we make decisions today, without perfect information, where principles are expressed through on-the-ground actions.
“We need forests, but the truth is that they don’t really need us.”
In more than 20 years of wrestling with this daunting question I have learned from many remarkable ecologists, foresters, landowners, and perhaps the best mentor, the forest itself. I also relied on the guiding principles of the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization devoted to advancing a culture of forest stewardship. To guide my actions and help communicate forest management to others, I have focused on three often overlapping concepts: Diversity, Balance, and Adaptation.
Diversity, Balance, and Adaptation
Diversity is central to my practice and invokes the essential stabilizing effect that variability in species, structure, and age classes has on the health and productivity of forest ecosystems. When faced with complex systems, we should default to fostering diversity as the best means to ensure a sustainable resource for humans and a healthy ecosystem for everything else.
While striving for diversity we must also seek balance in our management goals and approaches. No two forest sites or ownerships are identical, and each comes with unique conditions and priorities. As a result, different values will be given more weight in different circumstances. We must be able to balance management directives. For example, due to the region’s land-use history in New England we must increase old forests, yet we still need to produce wood products at levels matching societal requirements.
Forestry is fundamentally about the future, but despite our best efforts the future doesn't always conform to expectations. Desired regeneration may not happen as anticipated, novel pests can cause tree mortality, storms can damage expansive areas in minutes. When outcomes don’t match expectations, ecological forestry requires that we learn and adapt. This is what nature does; we must do the same.
Forester Ross Morgan marking an intermediate thinning in a northern hardwood stand. Photo © Rick Morrill
In Practice
How do these concepts become reality? As a consultant, I have been fortunate to work with the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont. The Center’s management team is committed to offering high quality recreation experiences, while promoting sustainable management practices. With 700 acres under its management, the Center offers an example of ecological forestry in practice.
Guided by a comprehensive forest management plan, we employ silvicultural models such as the irregular shelterwood. In this context the system seeks to maintain tree species diversity, including conifers like red spruce and white pine, in forests that could easily be converted to pure deciduous stocking. This approach simultaneously increases the diversity of age classes and vertical structure, matching goals of enhancing songbird habitat and forest resilience to disturbance.
“How are we to steward forests and meet human needs without disrupting the integrity of the ecosystems? This should feel like a daunting question. For me the answer lies in the practice of ecological forestry.”
Recreational trails are a key part of the Center’s infrastructure. As a management team we have worked to balance high volume recreational use with stewardship actions like harvesting, which can require temporary trail closures. At the same time, we have designated reserve areas focused on passive management. The Center also limits trail development in certain areas to reduce recreation impacts on habitat values.
While Vermont is often considered a climate refuge, impacts are occurring here. It is imperative that we adapt our practices to match this reality. Balsam fir, once a mainstay of our forest and the economics of silviculture, is suffering from non-native insect pests and a warming climate. In response we have begun to thin young stands of fir to increase overall tree health and vigor. We are also planting desired species—red spruce to restore a northern forest stalwart and red oak to assist in its range expansion.
Craftsbury Outdoor Center trails lined with firewood from recent harvests destined for facility heating use. Photo © Rick Morrill
As consultants on a range of private lands, we design much of our forest stewardship to promote diversity, balance, and adaptation. This current work is informed by my past role helping manage forestland in Maine’s Baxter State Park, where I benefited from the vision of predecessors employing these same principles. Baxter’s 30,000-acre demonstration forest includes actively-managed areas under diverse silvicultural practices as well as reserves where passive management allows natural processes to govern forest conditions. Experience on large public ownerships and small private properties convinces me that ecological forestry can be practiced on a range of scales and ownership types.
Confronting Challenges
We still have much to figure out. Our forests and forest-dependent human communities face significant challenges. I am generally optimistic about the long-term resilience of our forests. Rather, impacts on human needs and infrastructure are what worry me most. Extreme rain and thaw events now occur across all seasons. How does a landowner cope when a forest access road washes off the mountain twice in a summer, as happened to a client in 2024? Warming winters compromise the financial viability of harvesting projects, threatening the livelihood of logging contractors.
“Forestry is fundamentally about the future, but despite our best efforts the future doesn’t always conform to expectations.”
At the same time, traditional forest product markets have failed to keep pace with escalating ownership and operating costs. Extreme weather coupled with spiking costs threaten the viability of ecological forestry. Emerging carbon markets and government cost-share programs are a bright spot. Yet forest stewardship will never be a lucrative endeavor. For management to create healthy and productive forests, we need economic incentives, not barriers.
Multi-age conditions in an actively managed northern conifer forest. Photo © Rick Morrill
One final challenge is time. Forests function on a fundamentally different timeline than modern human society. Foresters are lucky if they work with the same landscape over a 30-year career. In our northern forest it can take 30 years for a red spruce seedling in partial shade to reach 30 inches tall. That same tree might survive to be over 300 years old, spanning 10 different foresters! The skills and knowledge required for stewardship using ecological forestry principles are at their best when refined through decades of experience in a specific forest geography. The result can be a forest steward who is grounded in an ethical responsibility to that place and able to bring into focus the complex interactions between geology, forest vegetation, and human history that are needed to sustain the forests of today into tomorrow.
Rick works as a consulting forester in Northern Vermont, together with his wife, an ecologist, and father-in-law, a practicing forester with over 50 years in the woods. Rick holds a Master of Forestry degree from the University of Maine and previously served as the Baxter State Park Resource Manager. He is a licensed forester in Maine and Vermont and a member of the Society of American Foresters and Forest Stewards Guild.