Thank you for stopping by. On this page you can learn a bit more about Paradise Ecological Services, which was founded by Badger Johnson.
-You may visit Badger’s LinkedIn profile. Badger is a Certified Forester through the Society of American Foresters. Badger is an Ohio Certified Prescribed Fire Manager. He is an Ohio Certified Pesticide Applicator and holds degrees in forest management, plant biology and agroforestry.
-You may peruse Badger’s master’s thesis, “Impacts of forest management on medicinal herbs in the Missouri Ozarks“. Interest in subjects of the thesis is what led to the formation of Paradise Ecological Services. Another source of inspiration for our work is the work of Joe Hollis (RIP) at Mountain Gardens.
-If you’re a friend of Badger’s, you can see some additional information on his private social media accounts. Members of the general public can visit Badger’s profile on iNaturalist to get a sense of some of the plants we are interested in.
Why agroforestry?
I’ve always been motivated by good food, and I like to farm. My first summer job was in middle school, working on a farm in Cincinnati. I lived on the other side of the river in Northern Kentucky. As a kid, I found a lot of enjoyment and solace by playing in the forest.
For high school I attended Cincinnati’s Zoo Academy. It was a zoology and botany focused magnet program. The Zoo Academy taught about habitat corridors and agroforestry production zones around nature preserves, and the role that sustainable agriculture can play in helping save endangered species. After high school and a few years of field work, I decided that I prefer working in the shade (versus working exposed under the full sun). This is where agroforestry, planting and managing trees on farms, seemed like a reasonable path to explore. It pulled together my interests in food, wildlife, farming and forests. Agroforestry is an ideal “land-sharing” strategy between farming and wildlife. Agroforests are human landscapes that pull double duty in furnishing wildlife with habitat, while efficiently growing crops- often more than one crop, and more efficiently that when either crop is grown in a monoculture. This over-yielding doesn’t happen on accident, though!
Forest management can have multiple goals. My focus is on cultivating non-timber forest products, while improving the carrying capacity of the land for game species, while growing more valuable timber. One of the most important tools for this is the use of prescribed fire. “Getting good fire on the ground” is a motto for using fire intentionally, to help tend the ecosystem. Using prescribed fire to tend oak woodlands is something indigenous fire practitioners have been doing on the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau for millennia. It is a tradition that the community here is re-learning.
Paradise Ecological Services 