CACOR Live | Tal Engel | Where are the Elders? Parallels Between Dying Ecosystems and Cultures | 26 Nov 2025

You are invited to a scheduled CACOR Live meeting.

Topic: Where are the Elders? Parallels Between Dying Ecosystems and Cultures

 Speaker:  Tal Engel

 Time: Nov 26, 2025 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)

 Join CACOR Live Meeting

 https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88206251484?pwd=sJzbDINN3Irkhu7t7lsPaf1qx5Gb6j.1

 Meeting ID: 882 0625 1484

Passcode: 768540

Summary: 

This webinar explores the striking similarities between the social and ecological conditions required for growing and sustaining both forest “Tree Elders” and human “Old Growth Cultures,” and how industrialization and homogenization severely impede the development of both. Elders were once essential elements of cultures around the globe: they were the holders of meaning and purpose, vessels for a culture’s past and arrows pointing toward its future; they were healers and sages and prophets and leaders. Most importantly, within their fragile frames they contained the full constellation of relationships that defines a culture and enables it to survive and prosper in sustainable and meaningful ways. But where are the Elders? Today one may find the elder”ly”, a title that that implies imitation, that it is a pale shadow of the Elder. The loss of the Elder is both a symptom and a catalyst for cultural collapse, in both the human and the natural world. To understand ourselves we have always sought out our reflections in the natural world—and what we have done to the once thriving natural cultures of our planet, especially forests, tells a haunting story that is ultimately about what we have done to ourselves.

We would be honored if you joined us for this exploration in which we will ask questions and examine themes of this nature:

1. What happens when life and death co-inhabit a physical or cultural space?

1. 1. May disturbances be essential to the growth and development of resilient cultures and Elders?
   2. The Elder as the most profound of paradoxes: a being simultaneously alive and dead.
   3. The suppression of disturbance (“infinite growth”) as the ultimate foil to the growth of Elders, deep relationship, and collective purpose.
   4. How relationships are responsible for maintaining healthy cultures and ecosystems within carrying capacity bounds.

• The brink of the precipice as a historically proven potential turning point (or: how the gravely threatened may be made sacred).

Biography:

 Tal Engel is a forest rehabilitation practitioner and researcher. He is also a regenerative farmer who stewards a thousand tree apple orchard with his wife and daughter on their family farm, Honey Grove, in Merville, British Columbia. His deeply personal relationship with the forests that surround him, and his grave concern for their future, has led him to dedicate himself to forest research and experimentation, resulting in the development of a unique and novel approach to forest restoration that is gaining interest and traction regionally, nationally, and internationally. In 2024, Tal founded WolfTree Integrative Forest Rehabilitation, a not-for-profit society dedicated to transforming people’s relationship with forests. WolfTree develops and offers forest rehabilitation services to communities and leading regional environmental organizations, conducts academic research, and engages in advocacy (especially in promoting an awareness that industrialized, homogenized and commodified forests lack the resilience to withstand the climatic and ecological crises of our times). Tal is conducting research for his MSc thesis on forest resilience, aided by a team of acclaimed scholars and experts in the fields of sustainable forestry and soil ecology.

Administration:

–  The CACOR Sponsor Gordon Kubanek

–  Please invite friends and colleagues.

–  One brief question at a time, please.   Others are waiting.

–  DO NOT post these credentials on social media.

– Suggestions for future speakers are solicited.  Wednesdays starting on 04 March 2026 are available.

All future CACOR Live speakers presently scheduled: