Herb Hammond

Kaiāulu

HERB HAMMOND is a forest ecologist and forester with 40 years of experience in research, industry, teaching and consulting. His work has been carried out through Silva Ecosystem Consultants and the Silva Forest Foundation. He is best known for his concept and application of Nature-directed planning, which he formerly referred to as ecosystem-based conservation planning. Herb explains that Nature-directed planning is grounded in a new relationship with Nature—a relationship that focuses on respect for Nature’s knowledge and gifts, responsibility for protection of Nature in all our activities, and reciprocity with Nature for her gifts.

Nature directed plans provide for the protection and ecologically responsible use of ecosystems through all scales of time and space. Working primarily with Indigenous Nations and other rural communities, Hammond has developed more than 25 ecosystem-based conservation plans/Nature-directed plans across Canada and in other parts of the world.

Hammond holds a Bachelor of Science in forest science and forest management from Oregon State University and a Masters of Forestry in forest ecology and silviculture from the University of Washington.

He is the author of Seeing the Forest Among the Trees: The Case for Wholistic Forest Use (Polestar Press), which won the Roderick-Haig Brown B.C. Book Prize in 1992 and “Most Significant Contribution” at Bumbershoot Book Fair Awards, 1992; and Maintaining Whole Systems on Earth’s Crown: Ecosystem-based Conservation Planning for the Boreal Forest (Silva Forest Foundation).

He is currently completing a book with two other people on applying nature-directed planning/ecosystem-based conservation planning to restore Nature in urban areas. The book's working title is: Inviting Nature Home: A Nature-Directed Approach to Cities. Herb is also working on a book about Nature and our place in her complex fabric. This book draws on the Indigenous knowledge and ways of being shared with him by many Indigenous people through the years. With assistance from Indigenous collaborators, he hopes to describe a new reality for settler cultures—a reality that is necessary for our survival, and how to get there in the face of the interconnected crises of lack of social equity, climate disruption, and biodiversity loss.

Herb wishes to acknowledge and thank his many Indigenous mentors for sharing their ways of being and knowledge of Nature with him. These teachings form that basis for his ways of relating to Nature, and his work to protect remaining natural spaces and restore natural ecosystems damaged by human activities.