SAXTONS RIVER-Ethan Tapper grew up here. On Friday, July 25, the forester, best-selling author, and educator returns to his hometown to present a workshop on his book How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World.
Tapper will give his 7 p.m. presentation at the Community Center at 24 Main St.
Following the publication of his book, Tapper used the opportunity to greatly expand his role as a leading voice in what he calls Deep Environmentalism.
"The trend has been for people to stop doing bad things in order to protect the environment," Tapper said. "But now we've got to be willing to do good stuff and take action to protect the environment. We need to take responsibility for where we get things."
The book is subtitled "the bittersweet work of tending a changing world." Tapper's list of the actions we need to start taking to restore and protect the environment will come as a surprise to some - thus, the term "bittersweet" in his subtitle.
Divergent views of forests
Over several generations, there have been two main approaches to how Vermonters took care of our forests, and this is basically true of forests around the country and across the planet.
Past generations of Vermonters had no problem logging indiscriminately. Clear-cutting mountainsides was not uncommon. Earlier generations of Vermonters were also often hunters and viewed the forest as a source of food.
But in the past 60 years, Vermont has seen a major influx of people from other parts of the country. Today, half of the state's population was not born here. Most have moved here from cities and have no experience living in a rural area.
The influx of such a large percentage of the population into the state brought with it a culture clash. While generations of Vermonters logged, new residents, unfamiliar with a working landscape, felt that cutting trees was a bad thing.
Also, decades of Vermont's bucks-only hunting regulations have led to major problems with the state's deer herd, with a seriously unbalanced buck-to-doe ratio. Recent changes in Vermont's hunting regulations are attempting to address that imbalance.
On the other hand, many newcomers to the state oppose any type of hunting. "No Hunting" signs are a common sight all around the state.
Tapper says both sides are taking the wrong approach to creating a diverse, healthy environment. His study of forests, both in Vermont and around the country, has led him to understand that both views - indiscriminate logging and bucks-only hunting beliefs on one side, and anti-logging and anti-hunting positions on the other - are equally bad for the environment.
His experience and the development of Deep Environmentalism has shown him that anti-logging and anti-hunting policies are as destructive to a healthy, diverse environment as are clear-cut logging and trophy buck hunting.
"I am the doe hunter, to whom hunting is an act of humility and an act of love," he writes in How to Love a Forest. "I am the doe hunter who sees beauty in a living deer and a dead deer, in living trees and trees stacked on the log landing, ready to be sent to the mill."
It is, he admits, "choosing complexity over simplicity, responsibility over comfort." They are, as he says, bittersweet choices.
Journey to the forest
Growing up in Saxtons River, where logging is an everyday part of life, Tapper says that he "didn't see working in the woods as something that would be a part of my life."
After graduating in 2009 from Vermont Academy, the private school located in the village, Tapper won a full scholarship to the University of Vermont. But at the time, he said he didn't really have any idea in what direction he wanted his education to take him.
His then-girlfriend went on a five-month semester with Kroka Expeditions, a wilderness education school based in Marlow, New Hampshire.
"It was a life-changing experience for her," Tapper said. Then 19 years old and wanting to strengthen his relationship with her, he took a winter break from UVM and went on a Kroka wilderness trip himself.
"We spent six months where we skied north in Vermont and New Hampshire, then built a canoe and paddled back down to home," Tapper said. The relationship didn't last, but that trip "set me on a totally different life path."
Following the trip, he worked for a time as a wilderness guide with Kroka and then spent a year in Maine logging and learning primitive survival skills.
"Then I got a letter from UVM basically telling me I needed to come back to school or lose my full-tuition scholarship," he said.
In 2010, he went back to UVM to study forestry, and he said he felt "like a fish in water."
He graduated with his degree in December 2012. "It was so clear to me that being a forester was what I wanted to do, so I applied for a lot of jobs," Tapper said.
A few months later, he was offered a position with a private forestry service in Montpelier. In 2016, he became the Chittenden County forester, a position he held for exactly eight years to the day.
Going solo
Tapper received numerous awards and distinctions during those years, including being named the Northeast-Midwest State Foresters Alliance Cooperative Forest Management Forester of the Year, and the American Tree Farm System's National Outstanding Inspector of the Year.
In 2017, he bought 175 acres of forest in northern Vermont near Bolton which he called "Bear Island." The forest, he said, had problems, and it gave him a place to practice his ideas about Deep Environmentalism.
During those years, he woke up early and wrote about his work in what would become How to Love a Forest. Following two more years of editing and polishing, he signed a publishing contract with Broadleaf Books.
His life was once again about to have a major change.
"I felt that being a state forester and the publication of the book presented me with a conflict of interest," Tapper said. "To me, the book was what was [more] important. I felt I could have a bigger impact in the consulting forestry business."
So, Tapper left his work with the state and created his own forestry consulting firm, Bear Island Forestry.
"My ability to work for myself opened up a few things for me," he said. When the book was released in September 2024, "a lot of cool things came out of it."
Foremost among them was the opportunity to educate people about forest and planet health. He's done more than 140 public events across North America since the book came out, sometimes several a week.
The book has sold more than 20,000 hardcover copies, and it will be issued in paperback in March 2026.
A finalist for the creative nonfiction category of the Vermont Book Awards, How to Love a Forest has been endorsed by prominent nature writers, including Bill McKibben, Douglas W. Tallamy, and Ben Goldfarb.
Tapper is already at work on his next book, which will be arranged like an almanac. It will explore similar themes, but it will place a greater emphasis on birdlife.
He has also produced a series of educational social media videos and has more than 160,000 followers generating millions of views each month.
New generation, new ethic
"My generation has been under tremendous pressure to be in movement," Tapper said. "To not settle down but to be traveling constantly. My book is about staying in one place and the benefits ecologically and for the community."
That's what Tapper sees with Bear Island - a place to homestead, operate his sugar bush, log environmentally, hunt, and grow an orchard.
"I want to help create a new generation with a different ethic and viewpoint," he said. "I'm teaching people about land-based practices, the working landscape. We can redefine what this practice looks like."
He wants to help people see trees as ecologically valuable and understand that hunting can make venison the "most responsible meat a person can harvest."
"We can cut trees in ecologically valuable ways," he explained. "We can kill deer and provide amazing food while benefiting the environment."
He notes that deer overpopulation is a huge environmental problem. He points out that the ideal, environmentally sound white-tailed deer population is around 8–14 deer per square mile. Vermont currently has 15–20 deer per square mile, with some areas of the state up to over 30 deer per square mile.
Other parts of the country have a much more serious deer population problem, Tapper said. Maryland has an average of 200 deer per square mile, with some areas as high as 350 per square mile.
"Forest disintegration due to deer overpopulation is a huge problem," Tapper said. "That can't be sustained."
Tapper also noted that the impact of climate change on Vermont forests is "profound and diffuse."
The "incredible climatic variability" Vermont is experiencing is taking a huge toll, said Tapper, pointing out that we have recently had the two warmest winters ever recorded in Vermont back-to-back, along with four 100-year flood events.
Precipitation is now more frequently heavy-rain events that cause soil erosion and small-stream flooding. Heavy rains are often interspersed with long, localized droughts.
Warmer winters have led to an increase in the deer population with far fewer deer lost to winter kill off. Whitetail deer have also expanded their range, now overlapping with the moose range, with disastrous results
"The tick population has exploded," Tapper said. "There is now an 80% death rate among moose calves due to tick infestations. Some moose have been found with 180,000 ticks on them."
Forest ecology is complex, Tapper said. Overpopulation of white-tailed deer leads to deforestation. Stressed tree populations become more susceptible to increasing insect infestations like the hemlock woolly adelgid or spongy moths, and to other pathogens. Vermont is experiencing an oak tree dieback due to these factors.
"There is a deep, existential shame of being human," Tapper said about humanity's environmental damage. "But things are not going to be OK on this planet if we don't help."
He added that, "once you understand the depth and breadth of these connections, once your understanding of the environment goes deeper, you begin to see, like I said, that it's not just a matter of not doing bad stuff to the environment."
"We now must be willing to do good stuff, even if it's hard," Tapper said.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.