forestry

Managing wildland fire is pretty much the same anywhere in the world. You need to think carefully about when and where to apply it and how to starve the fire of fuel in places you don’t want it. There are several ways to do it—but you need to know how.

As a U.S. Forest Service fire applications specialist, managing wildfire, monitoring ecosystem response and teaching others how to do so has been Tonja Opperman’s job for years. She is so good at it that recently the Forest Service International Programs invited her to teach fire monitoring in Zambia’s Kafue National Park.

With fires raging across the Western states dramatic images of wildland firefighters attempting to contain the flames are a regular visual in newspapers and on TV and computer devices across the country. These striking visuals rouse the fighter in some of us and we might ask: Can I fight a wildfire?

The answer is you can—if you meet certain criteria. Both federal and state agencies have varying requirements to award what is referred to as a Wildfire Qualification Card. Like a driver’s license, this card says you’re certified to fight wildland fires. So how do you get one? Aside from hours of online testing, you’ll have to enroll in a week long fire training-type boot camp where you’ll take more tests and be given a large spiral bound book called the Fireland Handbook.

This summer’s wildland fires in the West have galvanized the nation’s attention and mobilized arsenals of fire-fighting support to bring those fires under control. But there is another type of fire known as prescribed fire which helps make forests and grasslands healthier and protects communities and natural resources including access to clean, abundant water.

In the early morning light, 15 students look for the first time at a traditional Cherokee rivercane basket and marvel at the colors and detail.

Western Carolina University’s Adam Griffith of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines passes the basket around as he explains the cultural and ecological significance of rivercane.

“Since we started the Rivercane Restoration Project in 2006, I have just gotten more and more impressed with this native plant. It knows how deep it is in the soil- how cool is that?!” he says with a grin.

Hauling a trailer emblazoned with a forest scene and large map, the Dixie National Forest “Got Map” traveling crew made stops across Utah, passing out 60,000 free maps, talking to people about using off-highway vehicles in the forest and engaging the public in the work to designate motorized travel routes for 4-wheelers and all-terrain vehicles.

“With our new motorized travel plan across the forest, there’s over 2,700 miles of open routes for the public to come and enjoy this world class scenery and recreation,” said Nick Glidden, Motorized Travel Plan Implementation Team Leader on the Dixie National Forest.

Christina Harper, a new forester on the Bienville National Forest in Mississippi, has travelled a busy road from a special student training program to a full-time U.S. Forest Service employee.

Harper graduated from the Student Career Experience Program, which provides work experience directly related to students’ academic programs or career goals. The program exposes students to public service while enhancing their educational goals.

The U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory recently opened a $1.7 million production facility for renewable, forest-based nanomaterials.  This facility is the first of its kind in the United States and one that positions the laboratory as the country’s leading producer of these materials, also called nanocellulose.

Nanocellulose is simply wood fiber broken down to the nanoscale. For perspective, a nanometer is roughly one-millionth the thickness of an American dime. Materials at this minute scale have unique properties; nanocellulose-based materials can be stronger than Kevlar fiber and provide high strength properties with low weight. These attributes have attracted the interest of the Department of Defense for use in lightweight armor and ballistic glass. Companies in the automotive, aerospace, electronics, consumer products, and medical device industries also see massive potential for these innovative materials.

Deep inside the San Rafael Wilderness, employees from the Los Padres National Forest are working to inventory centuries-old Chumash sacred sites impacted by devastating wildfires.

Despite closure orders that restrict public access in America’s first congressionally designated wilderness, forest officials are concerned that site barriers and interpretive signs charred in the fires no longer adequately protect these vulnerable sites from further degradation.

Los Padres Tribal Liaison Pete Crowheart and Forest Archaeologist Loreen Lomax recently led a team of resource specialists on a 10-mile, nine-hour hike to evaluate two sites scorched in the 2007 Zaca Fire. They documented the extent of the damage and developed ideas for repairing the barriers and signs. One of California’s largest wildfires, the Zaca burned 237,000 acres over nine weeks. Fire-cost recovery funds recently secured by the forest are fueling restoration projects within the Zaca’s massive footprint.

Illegal marijuana farms in our nation’s forests are not only threatening the safety of humans in these recreational areas, but are also causing ecological damage to the land. And now, there’s proof that the animals that make the forests their homes are also being harmed.

You may start out wanting to talk to Leila Pinchot about a U.S. Forest Service icon, but the great granddaughter of Gifford Pinchot has much more to say about the future of another legend, the American chestnut.

One of the seminal figures in world conservation, Gifford Pinchot founded and served as the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service. The eastern forests we know today are distinctly different than the forests Gifford Pinchot would have known 100 years ago – they are missing the American chestnut, which dominated forests in the eastern United States.

Once called the sequoia of the east, the massive tree grew fast and could reach heights of 140 feet. American chestnut not only provided a seemingly endless supply of rot resistant wood, its fruit also fed inhabitants of the eastern United States for millennia. A non-native fungus caused the chestnut blight that killed an estimated 4 billion trees by the middle of the 20th century.