Dave Bengston: If you Google, ‘How to become an environmental futurist in just 50 years,’ you'll find a blog piece that I wrote that describes my journey, going back to when I was in high school actually, where my first interest in futures started because my father was a member of the World Future Society back in the early 70s. So we had the ‘ Futurist’ magazine in our house, and I found out there were people who called themselves ‘futurists,’ and they were serious, it was a serious business-oriented and military-oriented field because that's where it really started, in the military and then spread to the business world. And so, I had an individually designed bachelor's degree in future studies, and then went on to environmental economics in graduate school and got a job in Forest Service research. So, in about 2010 or 11, I had this idea, for the end of my career, going back to futures and doing futures research in the Forest Service, and that's how the Strategic Foresight Group got started.

I'm Dave Bengston. I'm a social scientist and environmental futurist with the Strategic Foresight Group at the Northern Research Station in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Foresters have always had this long term perspective — and you can find that in the writings of Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the Forest Service, Teddy Roosevelt, the great champion of conservation, whose administration the Forest Service was started [under] — they have this very forward looking and long term perspective, and foresters, because of the nature of trees and the growing cycle of trees, have always had a long term perspective. But, futures research brings something a little different, something to contribute to that, and II think it has an important role for forest planning, management, and policy. close