Upcoming Programs

“Only those who love trees should cut them,” writes forester and author Ethan Tapper. Tapper is a forester, birder, naturalist and popular digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest. He has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the forestry and conservation community of the northeastern United States and beyond, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. 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?

Joining Ethan in a discussion, Mike Chaveas is the Forest Supervisor of the Hoosier National Forest—205,000-acres of rolling forested hills of south-central Indiana. Mike will share his firsthand experience with oak-hickory restoration and explore the values and mindsets involved with land stewardship efforts in this public/private intersection. A significant slice of his work managing the forested lands involves working with communities and partner organizations to develop a shared vision of stewardship focused on restoring, maintaining, and interpreting 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.

Join us April 10 to listen as Tapper and Chaveas explore a land ethic in action for a modern, thriving natural world.

Join us for Leopold Week!

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Margaret Renkl

Author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South

Camille Dungy

Author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, and four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, plus the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History

Amy Tan

Author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement, all New York Times bestsellers.

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Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at the  Atlantic, where she covers climate change. She is the author of The Light Eaters, a New York Times bestselling book about plant behavior and intelligence research, published by HarperCollins. The Light Eaters is a New York Times bestseller dubbed a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom. It is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence.