In October 2012 the Tamworth Historical Society and The Wonalancet Out Door Club presented 'Reading Tamworth’s Forested Landscape for Clues about Past Land Use' with Tom Wessels, a terrestrial ecologist and a professor at Antioch University New England in the Department of Environmental Studies, where he founded a master's program in conservation biology.

He is an active environmentalist and the author of three books, in particular 'Reading the Forested Landscape', 1997.