Troy Firth is the Founder and President of the Foundation for Sustainable Forests, with over 45 years of experience practicing sustainable forestry and production of maple syrup. Troy is the recipient of the Sand County Foundation’s 2024 Pennsylvania Leopold Conservation Award, 2019 WeConservePA (formerly Pennsylvania Land Trust Association) Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award, and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s Western Pennsylvania Environmental Award.

Ethan Tapper is a Vermont-based forester, digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. For more than a decade, Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. His message of relationship, responsibility and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, his social media channels with tens of thousands of followers, and the dozens of walks, talks and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year.

In his personal life, Ethan works, writes, hunts, birds at Bear Island, his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard and sugarbush, runs three small businesses – Bear Island Forestry, Bear Island Consulting and Bear Island Maple – and plays in his 10-piece punk band, The Bubs. See www.ethantapper.com for more information.