Ethan Tapper

Ethan Tapper is a forester, bestselling author, and content creator from Vermont. For over a decade, he has worked as a service forester and a consulting forester -- advising landowners, municipalities, conservation organizations, foresters and loggers and responsibly stewarding thousands of acres of forestland. He is recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the conservation community of the northeastern United States and beyond, and has won numerous regional and national awards for his work. In 2017, Ethan bought the 175-acre forest in Bolton, Vermont that he now calls “Bear Island.” When he bought Bear Island, it had, as he says: “every problem that a forest could have.” As Ethan worked to help this forest heal, Bear Island helped him crystalize many of the ideas that would eventually become his first book: How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. Today, Ethan spends countless hours working at Bear Island, performing the countless bittersweet and beautiful acts required to help this forest “reach towards wholeness.” While he once saw Bear Island as a symbol of “everything that was wrong with the world,” today, he sees it as “a symbol of what is possible, a symbol of hope.” Ethan started writing How to Love a Forest in 2016, after realizing that there was no book that captured his understanding of what forests are, how they work, and what it means to take care of them. He wrote the book over the following six years, one hour at time — from 5:00-6:00 AM each day. It was published by Broadleaf Books in September, 2024. Since being published, How to Love a Forest has sold thousands of copies, been named to several bestseller lists and has been endorsed by prominent nature writers including Bill McKibben, Doug Tallamy, and Ben Goldfarb. In 2024, Ethan also started social media channels on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook — using the handle @HowToLoveAForest — and now has more than 50,000 followers. He produces hundreds of videos about natural history, ecology, forest stewardship and more each year. Today, Ethan continues to write every morning, as well as running his businesses — Bear Island Forestry, Bear Island Consulting and Bear Island Maple — managing his forest, orchard, homestead and sugarbush at Bear Island, delivering keynotes and talks across the United States and Canada, creating content for his social media channels, and performing with his 10-piece punk band, The Bubs.