Herster Barres, Jr.

Dr. Herster Barres, Jr. died March 7, 2024, after a short illness. After Yale and its School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, he earned a doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He became an internationally renowned forestry expert who pioneered programs to combat climate change and diversify crops for small farmers. He founded and ran Reforest The Tropics (RTT) which now manages over 1480 acres of research forests on 17 farms in Costa Rica. His successor at RTT credited Herster with developing systems and management techniques that were considered radical at the time but are widely copied now. President Clinton’s Climate Action Plan chose Herster’s project for reducing carbon emissions as one of the most promising approaches for controlling global warming. A true renaissance man, Herster was an amateur cellist, a pilot who restored World War II airplanes, antique gun collector, motorcycle enthusiast, and avid tennis player. He is survived by his wife Miranda whom he met while in Switzerland. They married in 1961 in Martinique.