Rubenstein School alumna Karin Tilberg ’78 has written a beautiful book about what love and courage make possible when they are put to purposeful use.
In "Loving the North Woods" she tells the story of how those essential attributes, powered by her UVM training as a wildlife biologist and eventual law degree from the University of Maine School of Law, positioned her to be a central part of a 25-year era of historic conservation, one of the largest in the northeastern United States in modern times.
She knew that the stories of how this work took place were ones that deserved to be shared. She spoke with us in early 2025 about the events that led to those stories, and how her time at UVM prepared her to be at the center of the action, as well as the eventual teller of the tale.
Writing a Book about People Committed to Beloved Land
Starting in the late 1980s, just a few years past her UVM graduation and earning her law degree at the University of Maine’s School of Law, she was in Maine, working as a lawyer to support forest conservation of lands she had already developed a deep kinship with. It was at that time that paper companies, who maintained forest lands as a source for the raw material to make paper with, began to sell off their lands. She recalled, “massive sales of millions of acres that ran through the 1990's and into 2000. The impact was huge.”
And that impact could have been devastating – for the lands and waters, for the animals who live there, and for the many people who make their lives there.
She explained, “Maine's North Woods have the least fragmented, most intact, forest east of the Mississippi.” The vast undeveloped area is contiguous, characterized by large tracts of privately owned woodlands (by the paper companies and family ownerships) with few towns within it. The unfragmented region is enormous for eastern US standards:10 to 12 million acres, an area roughly three and a half times the size of the state of Connecticut.
But to describe it this way is for this writer to use the constrained language of measurements to describe a vibrant, pulsing ecosystem made of waterways, old and new stands of forest, places that have been home to Indigenous people for twelve thousand years, critical for healthy populations of wildlife, and beloved by millions of people because of relationships with these places, with their beauty and the human activities they supported.
She recalled how her own deep attachment to the North Woods developed, as a back-packing instructor post-UVM graduation.
She wrote:
"After hiking along the northern stretch of the Appalachian Trail several times, starting to know the topography, mossy places and granite outcroppings, and experiencing the pulse of the land over the course of a summer.
"I developed a profound bond with his green, vast forest. It began to feel like a welcoming refuge, with an open door for me to enter. Is there a landscape within the heart? Perhaps something unknown emerges when you see a place. And know you found home.
"That’s what the North Woods means to me."
The depth of her connection to the place impelled her to endeavor to bring conservation to the North Woods. It was as much a matter of heart as it was of practical considerations. And the rich social ecosystem of conversations, negotiations, and financial resources to keep those lands as forests and the relationships they supported thriving, was something she devoted herself to with all of her energy – using the skills she practiced and refined while at UVM.
Getting to UVM, and What UVM Made Possible
She spent her first two college years at Bucknell University, where she recalled some excellent classes, but a sense that it wasn’t the right place for her as she hoped to learn about the interactions of plants, animals, soils, water, and forests.
“When you're young,” she said, “you don't always know all of what you want. I knew I liked field biology, so my guidance counselors said go to Bucknell, and that’s what I did.”
She went on, "But at some point, I knew I wanted to complete my degree somewhere else with more focus on natural resources, so I started researching options. Then a friend really recommended UVM, I applied and then got in and transferred for my junior and senior years.
"When I came to UVM, to the School of Natural Resources (this was before it became the Rubenstein school), I found myself in the right place, and I was learning what I wanted to learn.
"We did a lot of field work. We were out in the wetlands, out in the woods, I remember studying with Dr. Wood, Dr. Fuller, Dr. Hoekstra. Great experiences with Dr. Capen and ornithology too.”
She also got to study with UVM’s legendary Dr. Hub Vogelmann, whose research on the effects of acid rain on northeastern peaks was a game-changer for conservation and environmental awareness.
Little could she have known that she would go on to have her own impact on the region, and beyond – that her practice identifying birds, learning the Latin names of plant species, the specifics of biological interactions, would fuel an entire life devoted to conserving these for all to experience.
Putting it Together for Conservation
"Conservation" is a word that we hear often in environmental discussions, and it's one that came up repeatedly in our conversation. Karin defines it as "some form of legal status that ensures that the land will not be damaged, developed, or fragmented, and usually remains accessible to the public."
Importantly, she says, “In conservation work, you're attempting to retain habitat. Somewhat simply put: if you have habitat, you can have the plants, the animals, the full range of species. If you have the underlying habitat, it means even if there’s a disturbance like a serious storm event, the species are more likely to survive than if you don't.
“For me, conservation is holding on to habitat and I learned this basic principle from my UVM days."
Her UVM education asserted its importance over and over again – from her time as staff attorney at Maine Audubon Society, to work as director of advocacy and staff attorney on a number of complex legislative proposals protecting endangered species, supporting wetlands, protecting streams, advocacy for sand dune laws and coastal resources, and Maine’s first forest practices act. More recently, she has worked to create conservation easements that help keep forests as forests and ensure that there will be the needed buffers to protect brook trout in streams on their land, along with other provisions.
In that last case, she says, “I researched and worked with scientists to try to understand what the specific appropriate buffers would be, meaning how much land next to waterways should be set aside from damaging activity, and then I negotiated those provisions in the easement as a lawyer.”
“So being able to understand and appreciate the scientific side of things and then move that into the regulatory or legal framework meant a lot in my work over the decades.”
She recalls, “In each case I was able to work with scientists to present the science in a way that could align with criteria in laws and regulations. Or – when it was needed - to design new legislation in a way that would be effective.”
“You need to know the legal structure, but you also need to have the scientific underpinnings.”
Stories that Connect People to the Land they Love
The work involved with conservation involves many conversations, hearing many stories to get to know what matters to people.
Naming the book “Loving the North Woods” evinces a tender act of faith in these conversations and the relationships that made them possible. Though she worried it might have been too touchy-feely, she says the title expresses something so important to the stories she tells.
“The theme is how love can give you courage and how love can fuel acts that would otherwise be unimaginable,” she says.
She described conversations over donuts with people of modest means, talking about the lands they held deep relationships with that was suddenly going to change because of the change of ownership – unless there was some way to find a way to conserve them. In one instance, a small group of residents next to a large, forested tract of hundreds of thousands of acres, designed a conservation vision to bring to the new landowner.
So, the folks were saying, ‘Well, how much is this going to cost?’ And we said, well, about $30 million (this was a while ago – today that would probably be $60 to $70 million). And to a person they just started shaking their heads in assent and said, ‘Well, let's just do it.’ And they did it.
Success for a project at such a huge scale was in no way guaranteed. And she knows what that success was made of: “It's love of place. It's love of, affection for, something that's very special. It's an awareness of the land, the waters, the traditions that are revered. It's an allegiance to those values and that caring that made our collective work possible.
Finding Singular Moments within a Multifaceted Story
Besides the detailed, story-filled narrative that is told in the book’s pages, Karin wanted to steady the pace of her work, and original poetry was the tool she used.
Each chapter concludes with a short poem, and when she realized that these helped the reader to slow down, possibly absorb the previous pages, she saw that they helped the larger story.
Which didn’t make it feel easy. “I don't think of myself as a poet,” she says.
But she saw the opportunity to use poetry as a way to not only help her readers, but also to “encourage multidisciplinary approaches to things - using all the parts of who we are and trying creative and new strategies. These are things that have helped me a lot over the years, just stepping back and thinking maybe How can we do this in a way that is different that might work?
“So, in many ways, exercising that creative or that unexpected part of who we are as people is an important part of the larger story.”
Wishes for Today’s UVM Students
She thinks about students as whole people in a complex world when she thinks about today’s UVM. We asked what she hopes for those following in her footsteps.
“Well, they have a lot on their shoulders,” she began.
“My hope for them is that they stay curious and retain wonder and that they don't become hopeless. I know from my own experience that those qualities can make a difference.”
She is excited at the prospect of today’s students and graduates being able to tap into new scientific knowledge.
"With the increasing awareness of the complexity of forest ecosystems - and the importance of forest for sequestering and storing carbon - there's a whole world of important knowledge available to them. And the ability to use that science as the climate changes and as species move and adapt, they can be part of holding on to natural systems directly with their lives and their careers.
"It’s true that we exist in a world of increasing change, but that's also a marvelous opportunity – especially if students can stay curious and excited and hopeful," she shared.
She says that her ultimate hope for them is the one she holds for herself as she moves into an active retirement. “I think change is going to continue to accelerate. But I hope for them that they can live with that change, grow in it and be part of shaping it in a way that allows for the natural world to thrive.”
“The fact that we still have the North Woods in Maine and still huge forests and natural areas in Vermont and New York and New Hampshire that are mostly intact is amazing. These great forests are now considered globally significant.”
“Collectively, we’ve shown historic conservation can be done, and I believe the coming generations will be able to do work like this too.”
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Class Notes Expanded: Karin Tilberg '78 Loves the North Woods
Cheryl Carmi
Jul 14, 2025