Hans Carlson is Executive Director of Blue Hill Heritage Trust, a conservation and community organization that serves the Blue Hill Peninsula, in Downeast Maine. Prior to that he was Director of Great Mountain Forest, a 6300-acre working and research forest in northwestern Connecticut, which has been under conservation for over a century. A forest and environmental historian, he holds an MA from the University of Vermont, and a PhD from the University of Maine. He has taught in the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, and is the author of Home Is The Hunter: The James Bay Cree and Their Land. He is an avid outdoors-man, a woodworker, and boat-builder, and has traveled extensively across northeastern Canada and the United States, by canoe, truck and on foot. He was also a contributor to the Historical Atlas of Maine.

“I have lived all but a few years of my life in rural New England, where I have engaged with issues of land use and the environment. These have been lifelong concerns, brought into sharp focus by my research and my work in conservation. My work in the north, and with Native peoples, has also given me a perspective on this landscape. People have been working this land, with their hands and their ideas, for thousands of years, and we will continue to do that into the future. In doing that, I believe that we have a responsibility to pass the land on to future generations in as good as or better shape than we took it over. I believe too that we have a responsibility to pass along an appreciation for the land, and the lessons we have learned, and both these responsibilities define the stewardship necessary for all our futures ”