Too often people will acquire property and start undertaking management actions that they have “heard” are good for the land. These new land stewards will later take a workshop or invite a natural resources expert for a site visit and celebrate their missteps, with comments like: “I’ve cleared all of the cedar and I’m ready to manage.”
While certainly well intended, this statement gives an informed and forgiving expert the opportunity to practice their best poker face as they ask, “What are you trying to manage for?”
While it can feel gratifying to simply pick up a chainsaw or hop on a tractor and get to work, it’s important to clearly define one’s land management goals and align actions with those goals. Furthermore, these actions must be well informed, otherwise false assumptions and old paradigms like “There’s no such thing as a good cedar tree” can lead us astray. (For more information on that, consider reading “Wanted! Mountain Cedars Dead and Alive” by Elizabeth McGreevy.)
