John Foppert is the Head Forester for Paul Smith’s College, Assistant Professor of Silviculture and Economics, and Founding Director of the PSC Institute of Forestry. He is also co-owner of Pekin Branch Forestry, a consulting firm which for over 10 years has served clients in northern New York and Vermont. Earlier in his career, he owned and operated a small logging company in the Adirondacks and had previously worked in agriculture, carpentry, and wildland firefighting.
John earned a PhD in economics from the Technical University of Munich, School of Management and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School, the seven-university Erasmus Mundus Masters of European Forestry programme, and of Paul Smith’s College. He lives on a farm in Saranac, New York, with his wife and four children, the youngest of whom wants to be the world’s best forester when she grows up.
Academic
- Ph.D, Economics, Technical University of Munich, School of Management
- PgDip, Entrepreneurship, University of Cambridge, Judge Business School
- M.S., Forest Science, University of Frieburg
- M.Sc., European Forestry, University of Eastern Finland
- B.S., Forestry, Paul Smith’s College
Courses Taught
- FOR 260 – Silviculture
- FOR 365 – Forest Economics and Finance
- FOR 450 – Forest Management
Maker, N.F. and Foppert, J.D., 2026. The financial advantage of hardwood precision silviculture. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 56, pp.1-14. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2026-0035
Foppert, J.D. and Maker, N.F., 2025. The best forestry money can buy: Efficient contracting for silvicultural expertise (and the limits thereof). Journal of Forest Business Research, 4(2), pp.95-125. https://doi.org/10.62320/jfbr.v4i2.83
Foppert, J.D., Maker, N.F., Waring, K.M., Woolley, T., Nabel, M.R., Rainey, J. and Jurgens, J.A. 2025. Innovative Tree Designation Methods for a Complex Silvicultural Treatment: Costs, Efficiency and Outcomes. Journal of Forestry, pp.1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44392-025-00051-y
Foppert, J.D. 2024. The discount rate differential required for harvesting-by-dice-rolling to outperform optimal rotation planning. Forest Policy and Economics. 160, p.103154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103154
Foppert, J.D. and Maker, N.F., 2024. When economically optimal is ecologically complicated: modeling tree-by-tree cutting decisions to maximize financial returns from northern hardwood stands. Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research, 97(4), pp.590-603. https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpad067