Written by Dave Lefever on 7 April 2025 for Lancaster Farming News
Troy Firth, front, leads a group on a forest walk. Photo credit: Foundation for Sustainable Forests
The better part of a lifetime spent working in the woods has given Troy Firth a lot of insight into forest management. If you’re a woodlot or forest owner, his first advice would be to educate yourself on it. Firth would also enjoy taking you out on a forest walk, his favorite teaching method. Even though he’d rather show what he knows than just tell it, the 77-year-old forester and 2024 Pennsylvania Leopold Conservation Award winner took some time to talk on the phone as his maple tapping activities wound down during the last week of March. Firth has been working in forestry for more than 50 years since growing up in the farming community of Spartansburg, Crawford County, where he still lives.
He owns and manages Firth Maple Products, one of the largest producers of maple syrup in the state as well as a purveyor of hardwood lumber, including black cherry and white hard maple. However, Firth’s involvement in forestry goes much further as he seeks to ensure the future viability of woodlands in the region through his nonprofit land trust, Foundation for Sustainable Forests, launched in 2004 with his now-deceased wife, Lynn.
Troy Firth in an earlier photo with now-deceased wife Lynn, who helped him establish the Foundation for Sustainable Forests in the early 2000s. Photo credit: Foundation for Sustainable Forests
“The mission is to keep forested land forested,” Firth said. “That’s why the foundation exists.”
He has held to that mission through significant challenges, including China’s takeover in the early 2000s of much of the market share in the U.S. furniture industry. Furniture makers had relied on domestic lumber since World War II. As a result of the takeover, lumber prices have stayed below inflation level since 2005, Firth said. Prior to that they had outpaced inflation for decades. Additionally, in the past 25 years land prices in northwestern Pennsylvania have gone from about $300 to $3,000 per acre, he said. The combination of lower timber prices and higher land values leaves woodlands vulnerable to becoming something other than forest — and that concerns Firth. Despite a lifetime working to conserve them, he isn’t confident the forests he loves will be preserved in perpetuity. “I really have kind of a cynical attitude,” he said. His foundation acts as a land trust that doesn’t hold easements but rather purchases woodlands outright. It reflects Firth’s desire to offer the forests maximum protection against changing attitudes and economic conditions that could put them at risk.
“You can’t guarantee (preservation in perpetuity),” he said. “You can teach people all you can teach them, but they’re going to die. What will the next generation do?”
Despite being less than optimistic, Firth is doing all he can to make sure forests will exist for future generations. So far his foundation has purchased about 3,500 acres of land, in addition to the 5,000 acres he owns that will one day become part of the foundation. He also consults with some local woodland owners and shares his knowledge during forest walks and the annual “Loving the Land Through Working Forests” conference hosted by the foundation.
Troy Firth – Photo credit: Annie Maloney, Foundation for Sustainable Forests
He acknowledged the challenges landowners face learning to manage their woods, saying that even professional advice should be weighed carefully.
“Everything should be taken with a grain of salt,” he said. “The landowner needs to get more than one opinion. And he needs to learn himself.”
That includes people who already have some familiarity with the land, as well as those who move from cities and suburbs and have little to no knowledge of forests.
“Today we tend to have recreational landowners,” Firth said. “They want to get out of the city but know nothing. They may not know a cardinal from a blue jay.”
The increase in pressure from invasive species has become a major threat to forest regeneration during Firth’s lifetime. Firth said some of the abandoned farmland in his area fails to convert back to forest on its own because of invasive plants and deer pressure. He has been experimenting with different methods of regenerating forests, preferring the more economical method of scattering tree seeds rather than planting saplings. He has also observed species shift in response to warming temperatures. Tulip poplars are becoming more common on what was formerly the northern edge of the tree’s distribution.
First Principles
Delving into the specifics of Firth’s “worst first” and “uneven aged” approach to forest management is beyond the scope of this article, but his principles are evident in an Aldo Leopold quote he recited from memory:
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Firth defines forestry as the art and science of tree selection. His philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: “Love the land.” For him, protecting the land includes using teams of horses for logging. Horses are able to remove logs while causing less damage to the forest than machines do, he said, especially when the ground isn’t frozen and snow-covered.
One of Troy Firth’s horse logging teams. Photo credit: Foundation for Sustainable Forests
He recommends people read Leopold and other conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot and Wendell Berry. Firth said he and Berry have been friends for about 25 years, bonding over their mutual commitment to conservation. The author and farmer from Kentucky wrote a letter nominating Firth for a Leopold Award in 2018.
In the letter, Berry quoted Firth himself saying, “A bad logger goes into the woods thinking about what he can take. A good logger goes into the woods thinking about what he can leave.”
Berry wrote that Firth’s “love for the forest implies the need to know it, the need to observe it knowledgeably and intelligently for years and then decades, and the need to use it with the utmost kindness and care.”
Also writing in support of Firth was now-deceased Jim Finley, the founder of the James C. Finley Center for Private Forests at Penn State.
“(Troy and Lynn’s) commitment to sustainable forestry is setting new standards for the management of private forests in northwestern Pennsylvania, and their efforts are gaining recognition as a relevant working model that can restore and protect the health of Pennsylvania’s forests through active forest management,” Finley wrote.
Annie Maloney, the foundation’s executive director, said Firth’s longevity in the timber industry has strengthened his conservation efforts.
“His success through the ups and downs of the timber markets and general economy is a testament to his tenacity and commitment to the challenge of prioritizing forest health over short-term gains,” she said.
The Leopold Conservation Award Program recognizes achievement in voluntary conservation by agricultural and forest landowners.
The $10,000 awards are presented by the Sand County Foundation, which was inspired by Aldo Leopold’s principles. The American Farmland Trust and conservation groups sponsor the honors.
Troy Firth, right, selling his maple products in an earlier era. Photo credit: Troy Firth