EcoSystems (Forests) with Ethan Tapper, Bob Mello, and Bob Zaino | 2026 Green Mountain Book Festival: Climate Critters & Canopies

Join critically acclaimed nature writers Ethan Tapper, Bob Mello, and Bob Zaino for a panel all about Forest EcoSystems moderated by V.J. Comai! The panel will be held on Saturday, September 19th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM as part of the 2026 Green Mountain Book Festival: Climate Critters & Canopies hosted at Phoenix Books Burlington. 

Ethan Tapper is a forester, digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. For more than a decade, Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. His message of relationship, responsibility and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, social media channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, and the walks, talks and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year.

Ethan works, writes, hunts, birds and runs a small consulting forestry business from his home at Bear Island – his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard and sugarbush in Vermont – and plays in his punk band, The Bubs.

Robert Mello is a retired Vermont Superior Court judge, author of When the Trees Came Back: The Great Battle to Save Vermont's Forests, and is also the author of Moses Robinson and the Founding of Vermont (published by the Vermont Historical Society in 2014) and Last Stand of the Red Spruce (Island Press, 1988).

Bob Zaino is the Natural Community Ecologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. In that role, he conducts inventories and assessments of natural communities, and the myriad species they comprise, across the state as part of the Department’s Natural Heritage Inventory. He applies that information to inform land management and conservation. Bob strives to connect people to nature, and to protect plants, animals, and wild places for the future. He is a co-author of the revised second edition of the book Wetland, Woodland, Wildland: A Guide to the Natural Communities of Vermont. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and has a master’s degree from the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program.

Moderator V.J. Comai is Burlington's City Arborist. 

DATE: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM 

LOCATION: Phoenix Books Burlington, 89 Church Street, Burlington, VT 

TICKETS: Tickets for this panel are FREE! The Green Mountain Book Festival will be accepting cash donations during the event. You can RSVP through the Seven Days Tickets website. 

BOOKS: Copies of books by Ethan Tapper, Bob Mello, and Bob Zaino will be available for purchase at the event.