Written by Ryan Salyers
Written by Billy Coffey, SWVA Crew Leader
Written by Zander Evans
Written by Zander Evans
A science inspired art show in Taos, NM Written by Cody Dems
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Written by Shannon Maes
In September 2025, the Guild launched a three-person Forest Stewards Apprenticeship (FSA) crew to work with the Penobscot Nation’s Department of Natural Resources (PN DNR). Over the course of their six-month season, apprentices Agenor Duhon, Gabe Stewart, and Jacob Baker shared a season of learning, collaboration, and hands-on stewardship of Penobscot Tribal lands.
This week, I stepped into the role of crew leader. We worked a full 40-hour week, splitting our time between Clifton Farms and a prescribed burn operation. On the first day in the field, we completed hack-and-squirt treatments on trees that had been marked the previous week. For the remainder of the week, we focused on marking trees for future hack-and-squirt work, maintaining a steady pace and ensuring accuracy in our selections.
As Guild members, our practice is fundamentally grounded in field observation. We know intuitively that forests are dynamic, living communities. Yet, for decades, the high-level systems used to value our work, specifically the carbon accounting ledgers tied to international frameworks like the Paris Agreement, have treated forests as static, quantifiable blocks of land. In a recent commentary published in One Earth, I argue that these legacy measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks are failing. Ledger accounting relies on crude land-use delineations and outdated technology, effectively penalizing the natural, seasonal flux of the ecosystems we manage every day. By forcing landscapes into rigid “forest” versus “non-forest” binaries, such legacy systems miss the complex reality on the ground. But a major shift is underway.
