Welcome to NH Audubon’s new Conservation Lands Manager, Colby Fong!
Colby is a Forester by training and a graduate from the Rubenstein School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. While Colby was educated in the Champlain Valley, he grew up in Central Massachusetts surrounded by conservation land and small family farms and orchards. This inspired him at a young age to be interested in the natural world. There he learned to love wildlife by catching, observing, and releasing amphibians as a kid, and later working on a local sustainable farm, which emphasized working with natural ecological cycles. From a solid base in the natural world, Colby then went on to learn more about the natural world from a wilderness school and eventually worked on a professional trail crew. There he learned more about trail maintenance, planning, and building.
More recently, he was a Forest Monitoring Technician, a Field Research Technician, and a Field Forester. Colby has worked in several different ecological systems in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. He has worked in white pine flats to red spruce bogs, floodplain forests, and so many other ecosystems in between. He brings a well-rounded ecological knowledge to the table, with strengths in forest ecology, plant identification, and trail infrastructure planning. As the Conservation Lands Manager, he wants to use his acquired knowledge to serve New Hampshire Audubon’s wildlife sanctuaries and visitors to the best of his ability.
He also enjoys recreating in conservation areas and public lands. Some of his interests in the world of outdoor recreation are thru-hiking, mountain biking, backcountry skiing, paddling, trail running, and many others. He also enjoys gardening and reading about agriculture and ecological design.