Every property is unique, and so is every landowner’s relationship to it. Our planning process begins with listening—understanding your goals, values, and hopes for your woods. We combine that perspective with careful fieldwork, data analysis, and, when useful, simulation tools to create thoughtful plans that guide forests toward greater resilience, productivity, and beauty. These plans are not static documents but living guides that adapt as the forest grows and conditions change.
Silviculture at the Core
Silviculture—the art and science of developing and tending tree communities—lies at the heart of forest management and at the heart of our practice. We take care to understand each client’s values, then use our knowledge of forest ecosystems to steward stands in ways that benefit both people and the myriad species that share the land. Our ongoing study of growth dynamics, soils, conservation biology, and other fields informs our recommendations, as does our commitment to re-evaluating past work so that we continually refine our approach.
Good silviculture makes a tremendous difference. Past land-use practices left many forests stripped of their best trees and simplified in structure, reducing wildlife habitat and making them more vulnerable to storms and disease. With thoughtful silviculture, we can rebuild that complexity—growing forests that are more diverse, more resilient, and more valuable.
Planning Tailored to You and Your Woods
Our planning process starts with you. We pair inventories and data analysis with field notes and observations, tailoring them to your goals. Depending on your needs, we may also use forest growth and yield simulations, optimization tools, and scenario modeling to illuminate the likely outcomes of different options. Together we review preliminary recommendations, narrowing in on the path forward while giving you the chance to ask questions and deepen your understanding of your woods.
Meaningful, Informative Plans
We produce customized, insightful, and well-designed management plans that describe properties and forests in detail, report on inventory findings, lay out management goals, and propose strategies for achieving them. Plans can also be tailored to meet the requirements of programs such as Vermont’s Current Use tax program, New York’s 480a, the Tree Farm system, and the Bird-Friendly Maple Program.
We see forest management as iterative and adaptive. Our plans are intended as working documents—guides to be marked up, updated, and carried into the woods. We use them ourselves when helping to implement operations, filling margins with notes and adapting strategies as conditions change.
Maps that Guide and Inspire
Maps are an essential part of every plan we produce. Stand maps show property boundaries, forest types, trails, and important features. We also create working maps to plan harvests and trail layouts, track invasive plants, and highlight places needing special care. These evolve with management and become valuable records of the land’s history.
Our maps are tailored to each property and goal: a recreational trail map for one owner, a geostatistical heatmap of maple tap density for another, or a wetland buffer analysis for someone managing for biodiversity. If you have special requests, just ask—we do our best to provide maps and spatial analyses that both inform and inspire.