Written by Colleen Robinson

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 Ledger accounting relies on crude land-use delineations and outdated technology, effectively penalizing the natural, seasonal flux of the ecosystems we manage every day.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.

Women have always been a part of forestry. Historically, women often helped guide family decisions about when to cut, which trees to save, and how best to steward their land for the next generation. Historical accounts from the Southern Appalachians describe women’s roles in decisions about timber harvesting and prioritizing long-term forest health. These often-uncredited contributions are even reflected in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949), in which describes his stewardship philosophy informed not only by his professional experience, but by shared responsibility, where the perspectives of his wife and daughters played an important role.

Although rural regions often host the highest concentrations of public and private forest land, they typically lack the sustainable workforce necessary for active management and stewardship. How do we address this foundational problem in forest conservation?

The Forest Stewards Guild has a unique dual mandate: practice and promote forest stewardship. Personally, I think the combination of practicing forest management and promoting best practices is what makes the Guild a vibrant and impactful organization.

We celebrate the remarkable career and legacy of Leslie (Les) Benedict, who has provided visionary leadership and dedicated service to the stewardship of forests, championing the preservation of the ecological and culturally important black ash. Benedict, a member of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe in Akwesasne, north of the Adirondacks in upstate New York, recently retired after serving as the Assistant Director of the Tribe’s Environment Division for over 35 years.