Paul Barten is a new executive director for Great Mountain Forest

By Veronica Burns

Into the Woods: Dr. Paul Barten is Great Mountain Forest’s new Executive Director for Programs.

This month, Great Mountain Forest (GMF) is holding its centennial celebrations. What began with the purchase of a few parcels of land by Starling W. Childs and Frederick C. Walcott in 1909, continued with the vision of Edward C. Childs (son of Starling W.) has ultimately become the 6,000 acres that we are familiar with today. Hydrologist Paul Barten, an Associate Professor of Forest Resources at the University of Massachusetts, who has just been appointed GMF’s first executive director for programs, says that back then there were hardly any trees. “It was basically brushfield ,” says Barten, “so to look at a landscape like that and to be fully committed to the notion of forest conservation was really visionary.” Barten hopes to keep that vision his goal also. He did his graduate fieldwork at GMF and has been on the GMF board for 20 years. “The area reminded me from the get-go of parts of the Adirondacks and the Catskills, where I am from. It also has a northern Minnesota character that is really unique. I felt that strong pull of the place.” And like Ted Childs, whose mission statement included a desire “to conduct, endow and assist investigation and study related to such purposes and activities in any department of science and to this end to cooperate with governments, universities, colleges, technical schools, learned societies and individuals,” Barten will also work towards “connecting education with recreational uses and traditional uses of the forest.” He describes his approach as tri-partite: research, education and community service. Last year’s experimental Open Day at GMF proved a great success and will be repeated this year as part of the celebrations. There will be various talks and walks, as well as an art exhibition of local artists whose work has been inspired by the forest. There are plenty of longer-term goals also. “We have plans for a self-guided tree identification trail,” says Barten. “There are some places in the forest that offer good access and have a diversity of tree species, and where you are not looking up 85 feet into the crown to try to identify what it is you are looking at.” As a hydrologist, Barten would like to do a trek in the snow season, which would include digging a snow pit to illustrate the layering of the snow. Future plans include an all-weather facility, a sort of field station, which would encourage more research scientists to come to GMF, especially graduate students. Another project under consideration is to build a modest sap house. “We’d like to have people come up during mud season and learn about it and hopefully, buy some syrup so the money can go back into our forest programs.” A little museum is another plan, which would include a tagged timeline section of a hemlock (some of which are 400 years old), which was toppled during an ice storm last winter. Barten is excited about his new role, and, in a neat twist, he won’t have to quit his day job. “I’m looking forward to doing something new,” he says, “that actually compliments my day job. I have flexibility with my teaching to have open days and so it works well.” And he has plenty of support from the staff and board at GMF. “We are extremely lucky,” says Elisabeth Childs Gill, chair of the Board of Trustees, “Paul is uniquely qualified to do this job. He has the contacts, he has the research and he has an interest in the history of this place. We could not be happier.” For more information on GMF visit their Web site Greatmountainforest.org.