How it all Started

lauren on October 13, 2025

By Rob Lamb – EcoForesters Founder

After 10 years of creativity, vision, and dedication, it is time to reflect and celebrate EcoForesters’ 10th birthday! Thanks to the hard work of our staff and board–and the incredible support we’ve received from donors, landowners, and conservation partners–EcoForesters has become an innovative leader in forest conservation and restoration. I hope this article provides a deeper understanding of why EF is an essential organization that needs your ongoing support to achieve our mission. In 2026, we will roll out our vision for the next 10 years of EF’s work. If you’re impressed with what we’ve done so far…you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Appalachian Forests: Amazing and Integral

Appalachian forests are, without a doubt, among the world’s greatest natural resources. Among the oldest mountain chains in the world, our forests are a spectacular life force of green, harboring abundant wildlife and intense biodiversity, deep nutrient-rich soils, a massive source of clean and cool air, and abundant crystal clear water. Appalachian forests and harvested wood products store the equivalent of 19 years of all CO2 emissions produced across the states. Nearly 10,000 species are known to inhabit the Southern Appalachian region alone, and it hosts the highest aquatic biodiversity in North America.  

Appalachian forests are the playground for millions, leading to billions of dollars in tourism and outdoor recreation, while the Appalachian forest products industry is another multi-billion-dollar business. Millions of jobs depend on a vibrant and sustainable Appalachian forest. In addition to being a main source of our income, they literally provide us with the air, water, food, and shelter we need to survive. 

Putting the importance of our forests into view provides perspective on the value of EcoForesters’ mission. Sustaining our forests is foundational and essential for our very survival. The work EcoForesters does each and every day, thanks to your support, helps sustain us and future generations. 

Why I Started EcoForesters

From a young age, I was able to develop a personal relationship and appreciation for these forests. What started with family backpacking trips in the North Georgia mountains ultimately led to a 2,000-mile thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2001, a master’s degree in forestry in 2005, and the start of a forestry career in Western North Carolina in 2006. Until 2014, I worked as a forestry consultant for hundreds of landowners, visiting tens of thousands of acres. There, I learned firsthand the untold story of Appalachian forest degradation beneath the green forest canopy.

It is easy to take Appalachian forests for granted. They’ve always been there, and any changes typically happen slowly and can be virtually imperceptible to us in our busy lives. But to understand trees and forests, we have to think in terms of decades and even centuries. Taking this into perspective, our forests have been resilient against massive assaults at our hands. Appalachian forests today bear the scars of mass clear-cutting at the turn of the 20th century, a legacy of high-grading and industrial forestry over the past 70 years, the introduction and spread of exotic invasive plants and diseases that have wiped out integral tree species and halted forest regeneration, and urban sprawl that fragments forests into more edge habitat of diminished health. An early EcoForesters employee coined a common saying amongst our staff these days: “Just because it’s green, doesn’t mean it’s healthy.” While each individual patch of forestland may still be full of life, when looking at Appalachian forests at a large scale of space and time, we see that our forest is losing its capacity to regenerate itself and is providing diminished benefits in wildlife habitat, biodiversity, clean air, and clean water. 

I became keenly aware of this reality while working as a forestry consultant for nearly 10 years. Time and time again, I saw degraded forests at risk of regenerative failure from past abuse and invasive plants and insects. I came to understand that both the prevailing conservation mindset of preservation, as well as the for-profit forestry model, were failing forests and landowners alike, inadequately structured to meet their needs. Small private landowners own approximately 70% of Appalachian forests, yet without appropriate public and professional support, their forestland (and the forests everyone depends on for clean air and clean water) will continue to degrade.

The days of standing by and letting “nature take its course” would not provide the outcomes we need to survive. Likewise, looking at our forests for short-term profit from forest products would continue to degrade them. Rather, we needed to invest in the restoration of forestland. We must engage as active stewards of our forests and restore forestland, acre by acre, working landowner by landowner, so that forests can regain their capacity to maximize ecological benefits for all.

The solution: a non-profit professional forestry organization with a forest conservation and restoration mission, a mission aligned with the goals of so many landowners who desire to sustainably steward their land. While there were some conservation non-profits that advocated for good forestry, few were staffed with expertise in forest management, and none were actually capable of doing the work. With no proven model for success, starting this organization would be pioneering a new, yet essential path for the future of our forests; so nearly 10 years ago, I founded EcoForesters.

EcoForesters: Years 1-10

Ten years later, I think it’s safe to say that EcoForesters has been a tremendous success. Our success has not been linear, and while we’ve had our ups and downs, our overall growth and impact have been exponential. Our staff and subsequent impact have doubled roughly every 2 years. The results: long-term stewardship care on over 250,000 acres and with over 600 landowners, over 10,000 landowners engaged via outreach or direct consultation, invasive species controlled, and forest restoration on over 3,000 acres (including over 500 acres on permanently protected conservation lands), and a staff that has grown from 2 in 2015 to 26 in 2025.

Having multiple funding sources helps increase our stability and impact. EcoForesters channels private donations towards landscape restoration planning, stewardship on permanently protected land, and our outreach and education programs, while our direct forest stewardship work is funded by a combination of grants and investment from forest landowners themselves.  When you look closely at the relative investment of funds, our impact is even more impressive. For example, $250 would help us reach over 500 landowners, conduct stewardship planning on 10 acres, or invasive plant control on 1 acre. While permanently protecting land is an important part of overall conservation, the vast majority of forestland remains in the hands of private landowners. If conservation funding isn’t adequately channeled to this land base, then the risk to the future of our forests will substantially increase.

Much of forest conservation funding today is funneled towards reducing climate change and increasing ecosystem services. Here too, EcoForesters has an outsized impact. Through internal studies and forest growth modeling, we’ve found that over 10-30 years, forests where we’ve controlled invasive plants sequester 1 additional metric ton of carbon dioxide per acre per year than if the same forest had gone untreated. So far, the work of our forest restoration crew has led to an additional 3,000 tons per year of carbon sequestration, a number that will greatly increase in the years to come as we continue our work. Our sustainable forest management practices that mimic natural processes, promote species diversity, and retain healthier trees also lead to significantly more carbon storage. While there is currently no carbon offset market that sufficiently incentivizes landowners for this kind of work, EF is working with landowners to do the work anyway, leading to real additional carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change. 

After 10 years, EcoForesters has proven it is a model organization that can sustainably grow and replicate to positively impact forests at a landscape scale, demonstrating the essential path we must take to sustain forests and the benefits that forests provide. Over the years, our effectiveness has been increasingly recognized by countless landowners, public and private conservation partners, and significant funding opportunities. As a result, EcoForesters in 2025 is a rapidly growing organization that is highly effective in leveraging available resources to achieve the greatest impact towards its mission. 

Join EcoForesters for the next 10 years and beyond

The next 10 years are of outsized importance in determining the future of our planet. No individual conservationist, organization, or government is going to make the difference in stemming the impact of climate change and conserving forests, biodiversity, clean water, and wildlife for future generations. It will undoubtedly be a group effort. What I can say with the utmost confidence is that EcoForesters is a key cog towards achieving local and global conservation goals. As we celebrate our 10th birthday, our work is just beginning, and we are positioned to replicate our model and extend conservation and stewardship to make what we’ve achieved so far seem like a drop in the bucket. 

Our staff works tirelessly because they understand the importance of our work. If you are reading this article, you also understand and are committed to EF’s work. And for those that don’t yet know about EF, they are also a part of our greater forest ecosystem. The question is: how will we proceed? Can we sustain our forests and the benefits they provide? The answer: we can and will sustain our forests, and we will do it using EcoForesters as a model. We have a plan for the next 10 years, and it depends on your support! What part will YOU play in sustaining our forests?

A Landowner’s Devotion

lauren on April 19, 2024

Sometimes, landowners are putting in the work before we even engage them. These “model” landowners know what they want to do and are actively making their forests healthier. This is sometimes as simple as developing a plan and putting it into action. However, Russ Oates will tell you that nothing in the mountains is simple.

Russ won our EcoForester of the Year Award in 2023 for many good reasons. He is one of the most devoted and directly involved forestland owners in stewarding and restoring his forest for biodiversity, forest health, and wildlife especially. After all, he is a retired wildlife biologist who worked for 28 years for the US Fish & Wildlife Service. He and his wife bought 192 mountainous acres in Yancey County in 1996 and “retired” to return to NC from Alaska in 2013. They bought an additional adjoining 22 acres in 2016. 

Over the past 28 years he has planted and tended over 1,200 trees that most benefit wildlife but need help getting established (oaks, hickories, chestnuts, cherries, spruce and fir) in small wildlife openings he created scattered across his property. The vast majority of these trees survived Helene and will be his legacy on the land. He visits every tree up to 3 times a year to control the more aggressive plants (with our crew’s help and some of our grant funding) that can outcompete the slower growing oaks to ensure there will be an even more diverse, resilient, and healthy future forest.

However, Helene took down roughly 15 acres of his mature forest: some with wind, but mostly by the large debris flows that tore through the 3 upper drainages on his property, which merged and continued down his formerly beautiful creek to create a bare ditch now up to 8 feet deeper and a devegetated area 30-160 feet wider than the creek was.

Fortunately, he had thoroughly controlled any non-native invasive plants on his original property long before Helene, so his forests will regrow well on their own with native plants, except maybe where it is now bare mineral (clay) soil – which is infertile, steep, and getting baked by the sun now that the trees are gone. However, despite this devastation, he has kept tending his planted trees – fixing up the damaged deer exclosures he built and installed on every planted seedling (once he realized he needed to do that about 5 years ago). He is also taking this as an opportunity to plant more in these newly disturbed areas.

His first priority is to get some vegetation established on these now bare, steep stream banks for immediate erosion control to stop more soil from washing into the creek and further impacting the previously very high-quality water. The simplest and quickest way to do this initially is to spread annual ryegrass (which is cheap, easily available and germinates in 3 days), some fertilizer, and straw mulch on these slopes: then, ideally on steep slopes, cover it with biodegradable coconut fiber matting to hold the seed in place. Once some vegetation is established, erosion will be greatly reduced. And then, he can overseed with more desirable and perennial native grasses and wildflowers. Next, as the annual ryegrass dies back over the summer, the naturally existing and additionally spread native seeds can grow and establish a nice native grass and wildflower stream bank this growing season. This work is still in the early stages, but will proceed further as more assistance is secured.

To truly stabilize these stream banks he is planning on getting perennial woody plants established with year round roots to really hold the soil in place. Fortunately, many floodplain species will grow roots by just putting a freshly cut branch at least half way (preferably 2/3rds) into the ground with at least 2 buds above the ground – called “livestaking”. Branches that are at least 1’ long and at least ½” in diameter work well for species such as willows (silky or black), dogwood (silky or red osier), elderberry, nine-bark, buttonbush, alder, spicebush, and even larger tree species such as sycamore, cottonwood, and river birch. (For more info see NCSU Extension Service’s publication: https://bae.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/07/Small-scale-Solutions-to-Eroding-Streambanks.pdf).

Finally, he plans to plant a row of white oaks (the most desirable tree for wildlife), and possibly some shagbark hickories along the top of the stream bank. Russ has applied for Emergency Forest Restoration Program funding from the Farm Service Agency which will help offset the costs of his work. He is still waiting patiently to learn if he was accepted, but landowners that have a management plan and are mitigating wildfire risks should be well suited to be reimbursed for some of their expenses.

This is what one dedicated man (and a very understanding wife!) can do when he devotes his time and invests his money in improving his forest. It is likely that this forest will come back more diverse, resilient and healthy in the future – even after the destruction of Helene.