Celebrating Guild member Bob Perschel

Written by Zander Evans

Founding Guild member, Bob Perschel, is retiring after 12 successful years at the New England Forestry Foundation. While we celebrate Bob’s career, it is also a chance to welcome NEFF’s new Executive Director, Ryan Owens! We look forward to working with Ryan and the rest of the NEFF team. 

Not only was Bob a founding member of the Guild, but he served as the first Northeast Director, helping to start the Guild expansion of project work beyond the Southwest. In 2007, he authored the Guild report Climate Change, Carbon, and the Forests of the Northeast and helped craft the Guild’s Policy Statement the following year, which made the Guild the first forestry organization to recognize the anthropogenic drivers of climate change. Bob brought both the practical insights from his work as a forester as well as a passion for forests’ intrinsic value amplified by his time at the Wilderness Society.  

His work on climate change continued at NEFF as he helped the organization step up to national leadership on forest-based climate solutions. NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities project, funded by a $30 million award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a signature element of this cutting-edge climate work and is designed to both help forest landowners implement climate-smart forest practices and build markets for climate-smart forest products. 

Bob continues to be a deep thinker on forests in a changing world as evident in his recent article Beyond the Beyond. The article builds on the influential report, Beyond the ‘Illusion of Preservation’ which is discussed in detail in this autumn’s edition of the Guild’s Forest Steward magazine. Bob asks an important question for the Northeast: What if we could increase the production of wood-based materials and use them to substitute for more climate-polluting materials like concrete, steel, and plastic?  

Another piece Bob wrote recently is a poem inspired by a ProSilva meeting in Slovakia: Lie Down: A Forester’s Directive. The two pieces together are a wonderful encapsulation of Bob’s career because they include both forestry as a solution to real-world problems and the more philosophical element, the inspiring ‘spark’ which is signature “Guild.” 

Thank you Bob, for your inspiration and all you do for forests and the communities who depend on forests.