You Can’t Uproot This Forester

My upbringing on the farm contributed to my career path in conservation. I was drawn to working outdoors, and I went to forestry school initially thinking I would become a field forester. While I was studying at North Carolina State University’s College of Natural Resources, The Conservation Fund invited students to learn about their organization, so I went to check out their Chapel Hill office (and eat free pizza). When I learned more about the Working Forests model I was really intrigued. I was impressed by the mission and model—the ability to optimize conservation value efficiently at scale. The Conservation Fund’s dual charter of land conservation and sustainable economic development resonated with my own family’s experience in conservation.

I was fortunate to start working at the Fund in 2015 as an intern. I was responsible for building forest optimization models that project sustainable harvest schedules. Building these models and sharing the data with our forest operations team provides valuable information that ensures all our forestry practices are sustainable and create a data-driven schedule that optimizes when and where we should be harvesting.

Now I’m an official staff member, and my team and I handle a lot of complex data—keeping track of inventory information when we purchase a property, estimating annual growth and tracking management activity. I do a fair amount of mapping—estimating the conservation impact of our program in miles streams, acres of wetlands, and tons of carbon. I help our team build financial models at the project and portfolio level to inform land purchases and sale decisions. I like thinking about management problems and the challenge of building models that can improve our purchase and management decisions.

I also help manage five reforestation projects in the lower Mississippi River Valley by collecting and evaluating data to make sure the trees are doing well (kind of like planting trees as a kid on my parents’ farm, just on a much larger scale). This work keeps these projects in line with the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards.

The pandemic has prevented me from traveling to forests or meeting with colleagues, conservation partners and forest managers, so that has been a bit of a challenge. We work in 17 different states, each with different silvicultural systems, forest cover, geophysical and ecological attributes. I miss being able to meet with experts steeped in regionally specific forestry knowledge, and the experience of learning something new every time I’m in the field.

Our team as a whole has adapted tremendously during this time. The work must go on, and the pace has not slowed down at all. We have more Zoom calls like everyone else, and we’ve made a point to schedule a regular “happy hour” call to check in about life in general.

On a personal level, the pandemic has made me more aware of how important and invaluable our public land is. Our open spaces for recreation are such a haven for my family, providing us with the ability to spend time safely in a different environment. Just as I enjoy walking around my parents’ farm with my family and seeing the trees I helped plant 20 years ago, it is wonderful to see people enjoying our parks and forests. That’s what I love—recognizing the long-term impact of what we can do today. The importance of conserving these places is more vital now than ever.