Rogues Gallery - ENTS Executive Committee

  "As a new member with no degrees, no formal forestry education except lots of seminars, 45 years in the woods, first as a logger (veneer and then sawlog and a little pulp in poor years, now in my 15th year as a specimen tree grower with growing operations in four states, I look to the professionals for hopefully good unbiased research, and to the amateur huggers for passion and fresh ideas. ENTS to me, spoke in many voices that was leavened with common caring for the fabric of the forest not the economics but the biological good and majesty of our trees. Without the forest this planet as we know it dies. Regardless of degrees or organizations, regardless of man's petty disputes of hierarchy, our forests need us (all of us) now more than ever, to hold the tide of man back, to corral and channel our disruptive and voracious appetite for timber with a longer term view than a 20 year plan for Loblolly. Walk softly, leave no trace, harvest responsibly using sustainable BMP's, and ENTS's mission of education and big tree celebration will be an enjoyable passion. Look to the value of the information provided and not the title from whence it came. Even babes can have wisdom. John Muir should speak to all of us.  - Ren,  March 19, 2008"


Robert T. Leverett

 Friends of Mohawk Trail State Forest: Cofounder (1993), President, and principal old growth forest ecologist for this federally recognized non-profit environmental organization and an officially recognized Friends organization to the state forests and parks of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

 Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS): Cofounder, executive director, and principal mathematician of ENTS a forest and tree advocacy organization with 380 members devoted to scientific research, tree modeling and measurement, education, and general enjoyment of forests and trees. Membership consists of academics, government scientists, professional foresters, arborists, research scientists in environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens. The core of ENTS is an advanced tree measuring group, which develops methods for measuring trees to a high level of accuracy.  

 Ancient Eastern Forest Conference Series Principal architect, and presenter. Conferences held on eastern old growth forest sites bring together academics, resource managers, and environmental activists to share information on eastern old growth and present technical papers. Conferences held at University of North Carolina; Williams College, MA:  University of Arkansas(2 events): Clarion University of Pennsylvania: University of Minnesota, Harvard University-Harvard Forest, Sweet Briar College, VA, and the University of New Hampshire, Eastern Kentucky University.

 Forest Summit Lecture Series Cofounder with Professor Gary Beluzo Sponsored annually by Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, Massachusetts as a public service. Six conferences held to date. Conferences present updated information of old growth forests in the East. Leverett is the primary presenter on Massachusetts old growth sites.

 Eastern Old Growth Forest Clearing House - Georgetown, KY: Advisor and consultant  to this organization dedicated to accumulating and archiving information on eastern old growth forests

Books

 ‘Eastern Old Growth Forests-Prospects for Rediscovery and Recovery A co-conceptualizer of the book with Dr. Mary Byrd Davis. An assistant editor and a coauthor of this widely received book on eastern old growth forests. A publication of Island Press (1996).

Stalking the Forest Monarchs-A Guide to Measuring Champion Trees Coauthor of. self-published book with Will Blozan on how to measure champion trees (1997). Included new measurement techniques.

Old Growth In The East, A Survey Wrote forward and lead essay for Dr. Mary Davis's publication seminal publication on the old growth sites in the East, 1993. Provided the data for southern New England and selected sites in northern New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the southern Appalachians. Assisted Mary Davis with the 1996 update.

‘Re-Wilding the Northeast - A New Wilderness Paradigm’  A coauthor of the book. Wrote lead chapter on eastern old growth. Published by University Press of New England

‘Sierra Club Guide Book to Ancient Forests of the Northeast’  Coauthor with Bruce Kershner of this 2004 book on old growth sites in the Northeast.

‘American Indian Places – A Historical Guidebook’  Contributor to this book organized by Frances Kennedy. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008

John Daviis, Conservation Director of the Adirondack Council, commented on Bob and his role as an "Evangelist for Old Growth":  "It was your contagious and charismatic enthusiasm for big and old trees in part, Bob, but also your commitment and dedication to wild forests, your powers of articulation in describing them, your sleuth-like ability to find them, and your moving sermons on their behalf!  In short, with respect to great trees and wild forests, you speak with authority.  You've a clear vision of how the East should be broadly and wildly forested, again some distant day."

A more detailed profile can be found here.

will_blozan.jpg (64433 bytes)     
Will Blozan

President, Eastern Native Tree Society, President, Appalachian Arborists, Inc., ISA Certified Arborist SO-4032A http://www.appalachianarborists.com/ 

The ENTS president is a certified arborist and former science technician with the GSMNP. Will has a widely recognized reputation as a tree measurer. He has been featured in articles, on TV., and on radio. Will is a co-author of "Stalking The Forest Monarchs - A Guide To Measuring Champion Trees". He has climbed and measured the tallest or among the tallest trees in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Will Blozan helped organized and mapped the structure of the Middleton Oak, in South Carolina, the Sag Branch Tulip - the first two tree to be mapped in eastern United States. Will organized and directed the Tsuga Search Project that documented the largest and greatest of the Eastern hemlock trees found anywhere, many of them hundreds of years old, prior to their untimely death as the result of infestation by an invasive insect - the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid. Will Blozan has recently become involved in a canopy mapping project of some of the giant Sequoia's in Whittaker Forest in California.






Lee Frelich
freli001@umn.edu

Vice President of The Eastern Native Tree Society

Lee E. Frelich is Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Hardwood Ecology. He received a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. Frelich teaches courses in Forest Fire Ecology and Landscape Ecology on St.Paul Campus. He has advised 18 graduate students, and is a senior member of the Conservation Biology, Natural Resource Science and Management, Ecology, and Invasive Species Graduate Programs. Frelich has published numerous papers on forest ecology and has been listed among the top 1% of all scientists in the world in the Science Citation Index, Ecology and Environment Category. He has appeared in the news media 200 times including /The New York Times/, /Newsweek/, /National Geographic/, and many TV and radio stations. Current research interests include fire and wind in boreal forests, long-term dynamics of old-growth hemlock and maple forests, invasive earthworms in forests, and global warming.


Dr. Lee Frelich is one of the most distinguished forest ecologists in the United States and the foremost expert on natural forest disturbance regimes in the forests of the upper Mid-West. He is the author of "Forest Dynamics and Disturbance Regimes". Lee is often called on as an expert witness on subjects that span the spectrum of forest issues from the potential impact of climate change to what constitutes an old growth ecosystem.

http://www.cnr.umn.edu/FR/CFHE


Edward Frank
edfrank@comcast.net

Webmaster of the Eastern Native Tree Society

I am by training a geologist with a BS degree from Western Kentucky University, and MS in Geology from Mississippi State University. Thesis title: Aspects of Karst development and Speleogenesis Isla de Mona, Puerto Rico: An Analogue for Pleistocene Speleogenesis in The Bahamas. I was a PhD candidate in Geology at the University of Minnesota. I have peer reviewed published papers in fields ranging from spelean history, geology, archaeology, vertebrate paleontology, karst processes and speleogenesis. Some examples:  Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, Vol. 60(2), August 1998.

I am a member of the National Speleological Society and have been involved in cave exploration ad mapping across the United states from New Mexico, to Kentucky and Tennessee, to Pennsylvania, west Virginia, and Virginia. I organized and lead a speleological expedition to the Dominican Republic in December 1986, and have participated in and organized field work in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

I worked for the BLM at the Pecos River Projects Office in New Mexico on the Brantley Dam Feasibility Project. I was a geologist for engineering firms preparing surface mine permits for the Pa. Bureau of Mining. I was research Faculty at the University of Central Florida's Sinkhole Research Institute with duties including the investigation of new sinkhole openings in the State of Florida, and maintenance of the Florida Sinkhole database. I was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Minnesota and at Mississippi State University.

I have been an active member of the Eastern Native Tree Society since 2003 and have served as the group's webmaster since that summer.

I am an avid writer, photographer, and videographer. I am suave, sophisticated, intelligent, witty, charming, sexy, devilishly handsome, and above all modest.
   

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