Moxie Woods

About Moxie Woods

The Foundation for Sustainable Forests acquired the 128-acre Moxie Woods in December of 2016 from Jean Engle. Engle, along with Glorianne Leck, Ken Jorgensen, and Pat Tuchscherer were members of the Moxie Cooperative Community, a group founded in 1970 in central Pennsylvania based on shared values of organics, environmental sustainability and human rights.

The Moxie Cooperative, having moved to Youngstown, Ohio, purchased the property in 1981 as a woodland retreat under the agreement that it would ultimately be gifted to a nonprofit conservation organization that could carry on their legacy of land stewardship and wildlife habitat preservation.

During her tenure at Moxie Woods, Engle cared for the land with particular attention to native plantings to attract a high diversity of native pollinators, as you will see as you walk through the central or south-central portions of the property in particular.

The last major timber harvest took place in 2002 across most of the property. Marked by a consulting forester in a manner very similar to much of the work that is done on private forests across the region, this cut was a form of high grade harvest. This harvest removed many of the larger, more valuable oak trees and left behind poorer quality trees of less desirable species. “Desirable” can refer to both economic value and ecosystem health.

It is now the Foundation for Sustainable Forests’ charge to try to reverse the effects of the high grade by harvesting less desirable species (a.k.a. “worst first approach”) and promoting a diverse, resilient cohort of trees to become future canopy-dominants.