Enrollee Spotlight

Mitch Lansky began his part-time (starting at two days a week) Level-3 position in Houlton, Maine in May of 09.  He assists the District Conservationist in the office and in the field with conservation planning, survey, design, installation, and follow-up conservation practices with farm and forest landowners.

Unlike many NOWCC applicants, Mr. Lansky did not have prior work experience with the Department of Agriculture, nor did he have a degree in agriculture, forestry, or natural sciences.  Instead, his degree was in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.  His other job, when he is not working with the NRCS, is Town Manager of Reed Plantation, a small town in Southern Aroostook County.

Mr. Lansky’s town manager position requires both people and office skills that he can use in his new position.   He also has relevant hands-on experience working on his own farm, where he and his wife Susan Szwed have large vegetable gardens and small fruit-tree nursery.  They have a woodlot that he has used to supply firewood and lumber for home use, and pulpwood and timber for sale.  He has worked as a timber cruiser, both on private lands and on the Baxter State Park Scientific Management Area.  He and his wife have built their own energy-efficient home that includes a solar electric system and a wood/solar hot water system.

Living amidst of what was (up until a few years ago) the largest extent of industrially-owned forestland in the country, Mr. Lansky has been inspired to do extensive research into the ecological and social impacts of forest management.   His research has resulted in the publishing of two books, several large reports, and dozens of articles.  He was a founder of the Low-Impact Forestry Project (LIFP), whose goal is to promote ecologically-sound, socially-responsible, and economically-viable forestry and logging.  From 1997-2000, the Hancock County Planning Commission worked with the LIFP to put on conferences, publish pamphlets, initiate training programs, organize woodlot owners, and run a website.  The LIFP is now located with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association in Unity Maine, where it is managing the woodlot, demonstrating logging practices, and training loggers.

Mr. Lansky helped pass legislation to create a committee to improve approaches to labor and raw long marketing in the timber industry.  He served on a number of state-wide committees, including the Northern Forest Lands Council Citizens Advisory Committee, and the Maine Forest Biodiversity Project (both of which went on for years).  With the latter project Mr. Lansky worked with a group that produced the book, Biodiversity in the Forests of Maine:  Guidelines for Land Management.  He was asked by the State to critique findings of the Maine Council on Sustainable Forest Management as well as a study of the Department of Labor on bonded woods workers.  In 2005 the USDA Forest Service invited Mr. Lansky to be a reviewer of a draft of the latest forest inventory analysis, The Forests of Maine: 2003.