Register

June 4, 2024
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Join Guild member Marianne Patinelli-Dubay, a philosopher with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, for a presentation focused on understanding Guild-style forestry in the context of virtue ethics. Following the presentation, participants will be encouraged to explore these theoretical concepts in a facilitated discussion. 

A forester is trained to understand and facilitate the necessary conditions for regeneration and flourishing. Through practice and careful observation over time, your ability to recognize the natural limits of a forest stand is refined. You take an inventory and reach a conclusion about how to proceed with a harvest by inhabiting the slope and aspect of the land, reading the ground for difficulties, knowing your own limits and those of others to identify and then do the right thing.   

As your steward’s mind matures, your approach becomes intuitive. Your familiarity with the land and your knowledge of what it wants in terms of optimal conditions becomes a matter of how you see more than how you see the land.  Is this forestry or virtue? Is there a difference? How and when do virtue and forestry coincide? To proceed with honesty, courage, and a clear understanding of need versus desire means living in the question of what good forestry means for the way we work and live on the land.  

As part of our Communicating Forestry Series, this webinar recognizes that the more we understand what motivates Guild members to do good forestry, the better we can communicate good forestry and its drivers to specific interested parties, landowners, and the general public.  

Watch recordings of previous webinars in this Communicating Forestry Series, by and for Guild members on YouTube. The full list of previous sessions is in the Guild’s webinar library.