Webinar: The Future of Eastern North America’s Forests and Our Urban Canopies Is in Our Own Back 40

Please join us Thursday, October 16 for our next webinar brought to you by the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council (TUFC) and the UT Residential and Community Forestry Workgroup!

The Future of Eastern North America’s Forests and Our Urban Canopies Is in Our Own Back 40
Thursday, October 16, 2025
11 a.m. Central / 12 p.m. Eastern

Preview
The Deep Southeastern states and the southernmost Cumberlands are the ancient warehouses of forest diversity, and lurking there are the keys to restoration of many species we’d almost given up on, like American elms and butternut. It’s likely that Southern genetic reservoirs hold the future of ash, beech and black walnut. And what was once Eastern North America’s most widespread and resilient pine, shortleaf, may help us overcome the decline in Southern pine forests.

Speaker:
Bill Finch
Founding Director
Paint Rock Forest Research Center

Bill Finch is founding director of the Paint Rock Forest Research Center, which partners with The Nature Conservancy and multiple universities to develop cutting edge forest research on a 4000-acre Nature Conservancy preserve in northeast Alabama.

Finch is the former director of the Mobile Botanical Gardens and was the Conservation Director for the Alabama Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He is also a founding partner of the Alabama River Diversity Network, a partnership devoted to restoring human and biological diversity along the Alabama River.

He is also an award-winning writer and journalist. His book, Longleaf Far As the Eye Can See – developed with his partner, Beth Finch – is in its fourth printing with University of North Carolina Press. As environmental editor with the Mobile Register, Finch won numerous national and regional awards for series on Alabama forests, on mercury contamination in seafood, and on Alabama’s many ecosystems. His column was awarded best specialty column nationally by the Headliners Club. His weekly radio show, focusing on natural history, the environment and gardening in Alabama and along the Gulf Coast, broadcasts every Sunday morning.

About Paint Rock Forest Research Center
At Paint Rock Forest Research Center we’re dedicated to uncovering the long neglected secrets of Southeastern diversity. It’s not just that we’re the center of tree species diversity in North America — we’re also the center of genetic diversity within species, and that will be critical to the survival of our forests. We’ve created a massive outdoor lab in the center of deciduous broadleaf diversity, where we have almost 90,000 trees and more than 90 species tagged, mapped, measured and followed for 50 years. The more we study, the more we recognize that we’re losing our ability to resist and recover from threats because we’ve failed to recognize the surprising variability within each species.

Continuing Education:
1-CEU ISA Certified Arborist