By Sara Wright

Ethan Tapper is a young and very engaging speaker who has written a best-selling book about having a ‘love affair’ with trees that began with a deeply personal ‘life-changing’ experience.

 In 2017, he bought 175 acres of degraded land and began ‘restoring’ it with the use of herbicides and heavy machinery, the latter of which compacts the soil and disrupts delicate underground mycelial networks. 

An undergraduate from The University of Vermont in 2012, he worked as a county forester until he started his own consulting business after purchasing his land. He has received many accolades and is endorsed by nature writers like Bill McKibben.

That this young man is a gifted speaker becomes obvious the moment you listen to a presentation, watch one of his many videos or read the book about his personal journey. He believes he has some answers for restoring degraded land and dealing with biodiversity loss (?).

Ethan has become an enthusiastic birder who may be setting an example for others. He advocates responsible stewardship of privately owned forestland, addressing some of the conflicts people have around land management in a respectful way. 

He advocates for deer hunting to interrupt deer browsing and control the deer population on his land by hunting, a practice he taught himself. He sees the forest as an ecosystem where change is the norm, and he says that he hopes folks will look at forests from a more holistic perspective (?).

As an ecologist/naturalist, I appreciate Ethan’s enthusiasm and am certainly familiar with his position as a forester. However, his ‘success story’ on Bear Island is only seven years in the making.

Tapper is educating the next generation (and others of all ages) about what constitutes a healthy forest ‘that needs our help,’ a questionable endeavor in my opinion, and one that supports pesticide use. 

He targets young people who were born into climate chaos by offering ‘hope’.

He uses his youthful years as a forestry consultant and his experience on Bear Island (his property), where he eradicated thirty acres of barberry with herbicides, as examples of his success. 

Herbicides are a form of pesticide. With 22 – 25 percent of our insects disappearing at an alarming rate (the basis of our food chain), the use of any pesticide is more than a threat. 

Nature is an incredibly complex interrelated living organism. Overall, we know very little about the relationships between flora and fauna and the workings of the fungal networks beneath our feet. It takes long-term fieldwork to uncover these relationships. Any action taken in the moment, like the use of an herbicide or what I call ‘the quick fix’, ignores the importance of unknown (or denied) long–term consequences. 

His belief that forests need humans to ‘save’ or ‘improve’ them is an idea that is universally popular in American culture.

Ethan follows the well–trodden path of the New England Forestry Foundation, the way forestry is practiced in this country. 

His work is not controversial; he has simply re-framed the conventional foresters’ story, adding words like ‘ecological’ to forestry practices.

 Emotional hooks like compassion and love are also added to the mix. Tapper never deviates from the mandate that forests must be controlled and managed by humans because we know more about how these biomes work than nature does. 

This belief stems from the colonial perspective that nature is a resource to be used and is not a complex, interrelated living organism that has survived five extinctions before humans – the youngest species on the planet – were a blink in nature’s eye.  

This tunnel–visioned approach ignores the fact that forests do adapt, but not fast enough to suit the present generation (example: see Harvard Study- Hemlock Forest).

Tapper supports the use of Glyphosate to deal with invasive plants. 

In Ethan’s own words: “In most advanced infestations, from forest understories to hedgerows and old farm fields, you’ll need to use chemical removal, the application of herbicide, if you ever wish to control them. This is a tough sell with most landowners, who want to avoid applying chemicals on their land at all costs. While I understand this sentiment, I have come to see herbicide as an important tool in facilitating the rehabilitation of unhealthy forests (my italics). Infestations of exotic invasive plant species put forested ecosystems’ abilities to grow, regenerate, and respond to disturbance in the long term in jeopardy. They lower species diversity and provide fewer opportunities and benefits for wildlife than native species….  Herbicide can be applied very conscientiously and thoughtfully, either to the cut surface of stumps or as a low-intensity foliar spray, applied to the leaves of the target plants. I have seen both of these treatments executed with very little to no mortality of native plants, even those located inches from the target plant. You can buy herbicide formulations in bulk at most hardware or garden stores…”

 Glyphosate is the most popular herbicide used in this country, and the active ingredient in Round Up. Tapper believes that, properly applied, “it is the only realistic way to deal with some invasives”. 75 percent of the invasive plant must be covered if using this herbicide as a foliar spray. 

Common sense dictates that even without wind or an unexpected rain shower, there is no way to prevent this herbicide from polluting the air, water, or the root structure around or below the trees and plants that are in the vicinity of whatever is being sprayed.

Tapper believes Glyphosate is ‘benign’. The International Agency for Research on Cancer disagrees, classifying Glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. (Opponents maintain that there is still not enough proof – this after years and years of painstaking research involving scientists in many countries).

This herbicide is banned in some European Nations because it persists in the water, soil, and roots, but its use in the USA and Canada continues unabated. Neither country mentions a word about how this herbicide might affect the mycorrhizal (symbiotic) mycelial networks that are responsible for transferring water, carbon, phosphorus, and nutrients through underground hyphae that are attached to each plant and tree root structure.

I conclude this essay with a question for all of us.

In 1962, Rachel Carson, ‘mother’ of the environmental movement, wrote Silent Spring, a book that forecast the future we are living today. She exposed the dangers of herbicides/pesticides and their detrimental effects on human health and the rest of nature.

How is it possible that we have learned nothing about the dangers of herbicides/pesticides in 62 years unless we can attribute this willful blindness to denial?

We are heavily invested in keeping things as they are.

As scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests, instead of imposing our will upon the rest of nature, we could begin to see that s/he (ki) is a powerful teacher. Instead of claiming that we have the answers, we might learn that the rest of nature is predicated on change, and that working with this living organism instead of attempting to control her (ki) could lead us into a new way of thinking and being, one that has life and sustainability at its core.

About the Author

Sara Wright is a retired educator, Jungian therapist, naturalist, ethologist, ritual artist, and animist.  writes about animals and plants in nature, and the relationship between nature and herself.  Her essays have appeared in 17 books, including She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 1. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues. She has Indigenous American heritage. Her essays appear in “Over the Edge and Beyond: Journal of a Naturalist”
sarawrightnature.wordpress.com

A Note to Readers

This article is reprinted on the Woodhull website with Ms. Wright’s permission. The essay first appeared on her website in on August 30, 2025 and in various newspapers and journals.

I want to thank John Glover for bringing to my attention the book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard for additional reading on the interrelationship between trees, fungi, soil, and what we can learn from their connection.