A personal account of the 2024 LTA Rally, written by Liz Thompson.

Liz Thompson is the Managing Editor of From the Ground Up. She serves on the board of Northeast Wilderness Trust and is the Coordinator of the Northeastern Old Growth Conference 2025, Wildlands and Old Growth Forests: A Vision for the Future, and posts frequently on Instagram.

This piece is part of a series discussing several inspiring gatherings that occurred in Autumn 2024. Read all five pieces in the Winter 2025 issue:

• Making Peace with Nature: Inspirations from COP 16 by Walter Poleman
• When Land Trusts Gather: Inspiration From Around the Country at the 2024 LTA Rally by Liz Thompson
• Collaborating for Healthier Communities: Highlights from the 2024 RCP Network Gathering by Editors
• Partnering to Conserve Land and Protect Birds: Highlights & Takeaways from the Northeast Bird Habitat Conservation Initiative by Katie Blake and Sara Barker
• Sowing Seeds: Vermonters Gather for Conservation by Liz Thompson

A report written and read by Walter Poleman.

Walter Poleman is the director of the Field Naturalist Graduate Program at the University of Vermont, where he serves on the steering committee for the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Network, and is Co-Coordinator for the Greater Burlington Sustainability Education Network. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.

This piece is part of a series discussing several inspiring gatherings that occurred in Autumn 2024. Read all five pieces in the Winter 2025 issue:

• Making Peace with Nature: Inspirations from COP 16 by Walter Poleman
• When Land Trusts Gather: Inspiration From Around the Country at the 2024 LTA Rally by Liz Thompson
• Collaborating for Healthier Communities: Highlights from the 2024 RCP Network Gathering by Editors
• Partnering to Conserve Land and Protect Birds: Highlights & Takeaways from the Northeast Bird Habitat Conservation Initiative by Katie Blake and Sara Barker
• Sowing Seeds: Vermonters Gather for Conservation by Liz Thompson

An essay written and read by Colby Galliher.

Colby Galliher is a writer, focusing mainly on conservation, wildlife, and environmental policy, in the form of book chapters, scholarly reports, and articles for local, regional, and national publications. He is the Editorial Communications Specialist at Northeast Wilderness Trust, and you can read more about him on his website.

Read the full piece and discover additional content in the Winter 2025 Issue of From the Ground Up.

Editors’ Note: Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities envisions a healthy New England landscape where long-term conservation supports biodiversity and healthy human communities, even in the face of climate change, habitat loss, and invasive pests and pathogens. Colby Galliher focuses on a few especially worrisome forest pests and muses about how our attitudes toward them might lead us to hope, rather than despair. What can we learn from the drastic response to chestnut blight in the early twentieth century? Can we do things differently? Are there lingering survivors of beech, ash, hemlock and elm that can lead us back to healthy populations of these species? Read on. Or, if you prefer, listen on.

A report written and read by Nadine Canter.

Nadine Canter is a disrupter, threshold walker, and bridge builder located in Vermont, where she serves as an advisor, a tai chi chuan and daoism student, and a lecturer at Middlebury College. You can find her on bluesky.

Read the written piece and discover additional content in the Winter 2025 Issue of From the Ground Up.

An interview with Amy Sheldon, conducted and edited by Liz Thompson.

Amy Sheldon of Middlebury, Addison County, Vermont, holds a BA in economics from Middlebury College and an MS in Natural Resource Planning from the University of Vermont. She represents the Addison 1 District in the Vermont House of Representatives and currently serves as Chair of the House Committee on Environment and Energy.

Liz Thompson is the Managing Editor of From the Ground Up. She serves on the board of Northeast Wilderness Trust and is the Coordinator of the Northeastern Old Growth Conference 2025, Wildlands and Old Growth Forests: A Vision for the Future.

Read the edited transcript and discover additional content in the Winter 2025 Issue of From the Ground Up.

An essay written and read by Walter Medwid.

Walter Medwid served as Executive Director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, the International Wolf Center (IWC), Northern Woodlands, and other environmental organizations before retiring in 2020. He has studied wolves in Yellowstone National Park, the Northwest Territories, Minnesota, and Ellesmere Island in Canada’s High Arctic.

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This piece is one of three parts of our series discussing the presence (and absence) of wolves in the New England landscape.

Read all three pieces in the Winter 2025 issue:

• Wolves are Expanding in Agricultural Denmark, Why Not New England by David Foster
• A Wolf at the Door by Walter Medwid
• The Wolves are Here by Brian Donahue

An essay written and read by Susie O'Keeffe.

Susie O’Keeffe lives at the headwaters of the Sheepscot River in Maine and is a Research Associate at the College of the Atlantic.

Read the full essay with accompanying photographs and discover additional content in the Winter 2025 Issue of From the Ground Up.

An essay written and read by David Foster.

David Foster is an ecologist, Co-Coordinator of Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities, Director Emeritus of the Harvard Forest, and President Emeritus of the Highstead Foundation.

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This piece is one of three parts of our series discussing the presence (and absence) of wolves in the New England landscape.

Read all three pieces in the Winter 2025 issue:

• Wolves are Expanding in Agricultural Denmark, Why Not New England by David Foster
• A Wolf at the Door by Walter Medwid
• The Wolves are Here by Brian Donahue