MISSION:
To integrate sustainable design, land ethics, and real-world learning in community-based forest conservation.

 

PRINCIPLES:
• “Health is the capacity of the land for self renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.” ~ from Aldo Leopold

• “Conservation means harmony between the people and the land. When the land does well by the people, and the people do well by the land; when both the land and the people end up better by reason of their partnership we have conservation.” ~ from Aldo Leopold

• “Without ecology there is no economy.” ~ from Justin Brande

• “Wilderness provides the base datum of normality, a picture of how a healthy ecosystem maintains itself.” ~ from Aldo Leopold

•  In healthy forest ecosystems, native biological diversity, soil and water resources, the forest’s contribution to global carbon storage and cycles, and forest vitality are maintained and/or enhanced. ~ from the Montreal Process

• As members of the forest community, humans have the right to access the economic, ecological, and social values of forests provided that the ecological carrying capacity of the forest is conserved. ~ from Vermont Family Forests

• “The two great ruiners of private land are ignorance and economic constraint.” ~ from Wendell Berry

• The three great conservers of forests are: (1) informed conservationists who receive (2) sound economic returns from their forest conservation work that is nested within (3) a community with a shared land ethic. ~ from Vermont Family Forests

• “Without application, ethics, principles, and ideals have no bearing and no test.” ~ from John Dewey