With its 2025 Founders’ Award, the Natural History Survey recognizes Matthew Largess for 25 years of generous, unceasingly energetic support that has taken many forms. Largess Forestry has been a major sponsor of Rhode Island BioBlitz every year since 2001, and Matt has also led others into sponsorships. He has led tree walks at many bioblitzes where, for many, Matt’s voluminous knowledge and seemingly unbounded enthusiasm, expressed with memorable antics like hugging trees and eating poison ivy, are highlights of the whole event. Matt, with his company, Largess Forestry, was a key participant in the Survey’s landmark Forest Health Works Project, helping with training, invasive removal, and deer abatement experiments.
The excitement Matt has found in the Rhode Island BioBlitz has led him to get involved in others’ bioblitzes outside Rhode Island, such as one in Agawam, Massachusetts, and he has brought the Survey along to meet others doing similar things and broadened our horizons.
Matt can also be counted on to promote the Survey at the drop of a hat to those he meets in his arboriculture business or on his many adventures. He is frequently to be found working, leading walks, or participating in events as far afield as the Rocky Mountain West proudly wearing Rhode Island BioBlitz t-shirts. Ask him about the shirt and he will extoll Survey projects, people, and ideas.
Matt and Largess Forestry have been instrumental in important community-based conservation projects beyond the Survey’s BioBlitz. Matt was the person who recognized Oakland Forest in Portsmouth for the relic pre-contact forest it was. Matt was a big part of the effort to communicate the site’s importance to the public, which resulted in its purchase and permanent conservation by the town.
Matt and Largess Forestry have also been carrying out community tree planting projects in the Providence urban area for many years., helping urban residents take ownership of their streetscapes, ameliorate the urban heat island, and foster wildlife.
Matt’s love of old, interesting trees has led him on many adventures around the country. Among the more quixotic has been the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a hunt that took him to a remarkable relic of ancient cyprus trees in central Florida that he has subsequently been introducing to forest researchers and conservationists far and wide.
The whole Rhode Island community, not just the Natural History Survey, would be poorer without Matt Largess, who is generous with his time, money, and above all his abundant energy. Thanks, Matt!