Dr. Steve Bick is a polymath forester and forestry consultant working with landowners, loggers, foresters and related organizations to help implement practical tactics and strategies based on applied research and
theory. He is essentially a market-based extension professor, without a university and with fewer meetings and conference calls. His work comes from both original ideas and collaborations with others. Projects are funded by soft money cooperative agreements and grants, in partnership with organizations and universities and in straightforward problem solving for clients who hire him on a consulting basis.
Direct participation in the working landscape keeps him exposed to free market ideas and transactions. In this work he has designed and taught over 225 full-day continuing education workshops and authored or coauthored eight books on forestry and conservation topics, along with many technical articles. His most recent project is the launch of the Vermont Forest Business School, in cooperation with the Vermont Department of Agriculture’s Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. Later this year he will lead a six-month business education program for mid-career forest-based business owners, using remote conferencing and periodic meetings. Bick has a PhD in Forest Management and Economics from Virginia Tech, with BS and MS degrees from SUNY-ESF.
He and his family have visited Bozeman each summer since 2006, when he first came to PERC as a Lone Mountain Fellow.
Discussions of renewable energy typically focus on technologies such as solar panels, wind power, and geothermal. In one state, however, a different conversation is taking shape—one that is focusing on refining an age-old source of renewable energy: wood.
