Adaptive Forestry

In the coming years what will my pratice be? As a forester, will I be adapting the forests or will the forests adapt me. If I look down the chain of being I'm aware that I've always adapted the forest to my needs. As pre columbian I set it on fire, then settlement wise, cleared it off as best I could. In the modern era I think therefore the forest is, at least untill a beetle outbreak spoils all my plans and recently in a post conventional manner I try to preserve it even though my cultural warming has all but made this impossible.     

There are hints of what my practice might be. A Vermont site has a silvicultural prescription for 10 species of bird. Perhaps this sounds a little prescriptive like a recipe for chicken pot pie, but the hint is there, what does the forest dweller say. I think a new definition of collaborative is needed. Rather than a collaboration of humans dictating the outcome of the future forest, I see a  collaboration of forest dwellers be they human or otherwise. The key is that we are moving into the information age.  Where once we needed a brain trust to prepare the smart plan for our future, now we need the forest dwellers to collaborate on a knowledge and forest  based practice.

Presence of my body in the forest leads to presence of my mind and it is through this opening that the forest can adapt me.