How to Love a Forest

media release: “Only those who love trees should cut them.”

So writes forester, naturalist, and popular digital creator Ethan Tapper.

Tapper's bestselling book, How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World, has positioned him as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the forestry and conservation community.  In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live during a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth.  How do we use our species' incredible power to heal rather than to harm?

Tapper will be joined on Land Ethic Live! by Mike Chaveas, USFS Forest Supervisor of the Hoosier National Forest—204,000 acres of rolling forested hills of south-central Indiana.  Chaveas will share his firsthand experience with oak-hickory restoration and explore the values and community efforts to restore, maintain, and interpret the cultural and natural resources of the Hoosier.

Tapper says that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, and even heartbreaking.  He will show how bittersweet acts—like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them—can be expressions of compassion.