Reimagining Our Ecological Field Station in the 21st Century
At Aton Forest, We are Reimagining Our Ecological Field Station to better serve the natural and human communities in our near bioregion in the future. Our core mission is to protect, steward, restore, study and honor two natural area preserves. We are currently seeking people and partners with whom to continue, co-create, co-curate, strengthen and grow this organization, its preserves and its impacts, at different relevant scales during this critical early-Anthropocene period of rapid ecological change.
Aton Forest, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1990, with historical origins back to 1945 as an ecological research field station and land preserve organization. It was established by Dr. Frank Egler for the preservation of Natural Area Preserves (semi-managed and wild lands) and operated for ecological and forest succession research in northwest Connecticut in the towns of Norfolk and Colebrook, in and around Sandy Brook and the Mad River, at the top of the Farmington River watershed, at the southernmost tip of the Berkshire Taconic plateau.
More broadly and formally our mission is to protect the ecological integrity and functionality of our temperate forest preserves, conduct scientific research, vegetation and landscape studies, educate professionals and the public in collaboration with other like-minded organizations, preserve the physical and intellectual legacy of our founder ecologist Dr. Frank E. Egler (1911-1996), and provide a locus and community for consideration of the bioregion’s health, adaptation, resilience and survival in the early Anthropocene Era.
Dr. Egler pursued “long-term, low-cost, low-impact” research of forest succession. AF is registered as a biological field station and as an Audubon Important Bird Area (IBA). The related Aton Forest Fellowship, a scientific research fellowship, was established in 1981 and currently supports one fellow studying leafminers and insects. We support other ecological research in our two preserves, the North Egler Preserve and the South Spaulding Pond Preserve, with a total of 2,459 Semi-Managed and Wildland type conserved acres. We currently own 1,463 acres in total, of which 1,157 are under conservation easement. We hold conservation easements over 997 acres, the bulk of which are on the Spaulding Pond Preserve, which Dr. Egler’s wife Happy Kitchel created, and which AF is currently seeking to acquire fee ownership of. We own four houses in North Norfolk to support our operations.
INTO THE FIELD AND BEYOND
When we say that we are Reimagining Our Ecological Field Station we mean that we believe strongly in our historic mission, but we also believe that to remain relevant in a rapidly changing biosphere, we must be flexible and responsive to fresh challenges, and we must be open to new and creative ways to deliver upon our historic mission. We are not Exceptionalists. We believe in focus but we also believe in reinvention, not for its own sake, but as a mindset and means through which to evolve, grow and succeed. In the field Dr. Frank Egler pursued real-time experiments with vegetation. Aspects of his work related to the Art of landscape gardening and RightOfWay management in the complex and complex system called Nature. We admire both Science and Art.
We seek to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Frank Egler. He pursued principled academic inquiry, admired and relied upon facts and findings, reveled in open even contentious dialogue, and applauded fresh thinking. Aton Forest supports diverse research approaches, with an emphasis on primary grounded activities in forest management, research, vegetation science, stewardship, ownership, citizen participation, and more.
Fortunately we do not have to belong to any particular ”school of thought”. We favor facts, sound observations, and substantiated theories, but we value most of all: fresh observation, solid intuition, and vital unbiased energies and curiosity. We eschew rigid ideology and unnecessary academic debate. We value exchange of ideas. We accept with humility that there is a very great deal that we do not know. We seek persistently to know more over time.
In this endeavor, we therefore invite your participation.
Aton Forest is a non-profit land protection organization and ecological field station, created for preservation of Natural Area Preserves (semi-managed and wild lands), operated for ecological and forest succession research in northwest Connecticut and surrounding bioregion.