paradise.ecological.services

I am passionate about improving society's relationship with the biosphere. My twin career goals flow from this core value: I am passionate about preserving and improving endangered habitats, and developing sustainable agricultural development via agroecological methods. My efforts to accomplish these goals have required, and assisted in developing, strong leadership skills, vast experience in natural resource management, professional research abilities, and a strong understanding of effective contemporary pedagogical methods. I have expert knowledge in forest ecology, horticulture, silviculture, non-timber forest products, botany, wildlife biology, data management and prescribed fire as a landscape management tool. Additionally, through multiple personal endeavors as an event planner, community organizer, and peer counselor, I have developed a strong background in professional writing, team organizing (as a leader, supporter, and peer), and independent time management. Ultimately, my skills, passions, and accomplishments show I thrive within projects that balance field work, social work, and both physical and intellectual labor.

Why agroforestry?

I am a foodie, and have long known that I wanted to be involved with agriculture. As a child growing up in the suburbs of Northern Kentucky, I found solace from the sprawling, smoggy old river town playing in the forest. In highschool at the Zoo Academy, I learned about habitat corridors and agroforestry production zones around nature preserves in Africa that were helping to save some of the endangered species that I was working with as a zoo keeper. Agroforestry seemed like an ideal “land-sharing” strategy to megafauna conservation while meeting human needs for food, fiber, fuel, etc.

Agroforestry systems are still in the early adoption phase in a USA context, but have a long history of use on pre-colonial Turtle Island. Many land managers today are used to either ignoring the landscape around us as wild, or completely subduing it through annual tillage, mono-cropping and the application of fertilizers and herbicides- or with even age management silvicultural systems that do not place much value on the production of forage or non-timber forest products from the understory. Agroforestry and agroecology in general offer a sosphisticated approach to land management that can achieve overyielding, using polycultures that mimic (and to an extent incorporate) the diverse species assemblages that are found in healthy ecosystems.

Visit me on LinkedIn to see my work history: https://www.linkedin.com/in/BadgerJohnson/

Read my master’s thesis to see part of the intellectual path that has led me to this place: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/62050