About Our Organization

EcoForesters is a non-profit professional forestry organization dedicated to conserving and restoring our Appalachian forests through education and stewardship.

Our Vision

Appalachian forests are vibrant, healthy, and part of a diverse landscape that is ecologically stewarded to the benefit of current and future generations.

What sets us apart?

  • EcoForesters straddles the worlds of conservation and active management.
  • Our credibility comes with our desire to put the value of improving ecological benefits over all others.
  • We connect with landowners by connecting healthy forests to their values.

What We Offer

Forestland owners and local communities benefit from EcoForesters’ ability to develop and implement forest management strategies that promote future forest sustainability and resiliency. Our methods emphasize sound ecological management over other profit and production driven forest management approaches. We are actively making positive impacts on the Appalachian landscape while still helping landowners achieve their individual management objectives.

View our forest stewardship services

Our Values

  • Community – we recognize our forests are natural, renewable resources whose sound management benefits all in the community.
  • Service – our team goes above and beyond to meet our clients’ and stakeholders’ needs and deliver high quality services and programs.
  • Integrity – our staff is dedicated to being honest, sincere, impartial, and respectful in our actions.
  • Collaboration – we work with organizations and individuals to create new, shared opportunities that benefit our forests.
  • Professional Expertise– our services and programs are based on the most current forest science and practices, utilizing efficient and innovative methods, and administered by well-trained, experienced and professional individuals.

Our Goals

  1. Stewardship Planning – improve Appalachian forests by increasing the number of landowners with ecologically sound forest stewardship plans and strategies.
  2. Positive Impact Forestry – conserve and restore Appalachian forests by implementing and demonstrating positive impact forestry through providing natural resource consulting for forest landowners at an affordable rate.
  3. Combat Non-Native Invasives – deliver invasive species control services to forest landowners while also developing landscape scale strategic control of invasive species that threaten the ability of forests to sustain basic ecological function.
  4. Advanced Mapping & Geospatial Services – provide conservation organizations, natural resource professionals and landowners with professional and state of the art mapping and geospatial services that help them achieve their individual management objectives.
  5. Cutting-Edge Forestry Practices & Technology – utilize, develop and implement state of the art forestry practices and mapping technology to monitor, sustain, and promote the ecological health of Appalachian forests.
  6. Collaborative Efforts – collaborate with and provide services to conservation organizations, educational institutions, government agencies and natural resource professionals that share our mission and vision.
  7. Educate Landowners and the Public – educate the public and landowners on the degraded condition of forests, current and future forest threats, and the pervasiveness of unsustainable forest management practices, while advocating for positive impact forestry as a primary solution.
  8. Natural Resource Student Education – support students and young natural resource professionals by offering service-learning opportunities that will strengthen their understanding of positive forest stewardship and provide hands-on forest management experience.
  9. Dissemination of Forest Stewardship Knowledge – advance our understanding of sound resource management and share knowledge and experience with other natural resource professionals and organizations in order to progress the practice of positive impact forestry.

Our History

Founded in 2015, EcoForesters is a new model for conservation: a nonprofit organization, built to implement positive impact forest stewardship, promote and partner for conservation, and educate students, professionals, and the general public. We are here to tell the untold story of the Appalachian forest and meet the needs of forest restoration at a large scale, for the long haul.

As professional foresters, we can read and tell the story of any particular piece of forestland in a way that most other conservation professionals are untrained to do. EcoForesters can implement active forest stewardship in a practical and comprehensive way, providing positive impact forestry services to landowners that achieves desirable on the ground results. No other conservation organization is designed for this purpose.

EcoForesters is also wholly different from private, for-profit consulting foresters. Our activities may appear similar, but commercial foresters generally make recommendations based on a course of action which yields the most profit for the landowner, while EcoForesters will present all reasonable options and then recommend a course of action which will most effectively conserve and restore the forest for current and future generations – while remaining economically viable and generating revenue to landowners.