Brian Kittler

Reckon spoke with Brian Kittler, the vice president of forest restoration at American Forests, a 150-year-old Chicago-based non-profit dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy forest ecosystems. Over the last decade, the United States has lost 2 million hectares of natural forest. That’s about 3.7 million football fields worth. Deforestation, illegal logging, wildfires and climate change are some of the biggest issues facing our precious forests, and the situation is not improving. “At American Forests we tend to focus on forest ecosystems that are important for wildlife habitat, how they provide water to human communities, carbon storage, and for biodiversity values. Much of what we do is focused on recovering and helping forests that have experienced severe impacts from wildfires and other disturbances,” said Kittler.