forestry

Since the second week in July, locals and visitors alike have congregated on the viewing platforms above Steep Creek near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau, Alaska to enjoy the sockeye salmon migration.

From mid-July through the end of August, the sockeye salmon enter the creek to dig redds (nests), find mates and spawn. For thousands of viewers this annual show is seen not in person but on the screens of their computers or smart phones, thanks to the Steep Creek salmon cam.

After nearly 32 years of combined federal and state natural resource management public service, I retired.

I have been blessed with a rewarding career. But before that final day working in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary arrived, I had already applied for and been accepted as a volunteer wilderness ranger in the Pasayten Wilderness of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington State. It was the best promotion of my career.

For the better part of a decade, Lincoln Bramwell spent summers fighting wildfires across the West for the U.S. Forest Service. But over the years he spent on the fireline, he began to see his job change in ways that felt more obvious and dangerous.

This is because Bramwell began to see more homes on mountain slopes and ridges. An increasing wildland-urban interface adds challenges further complicated by public demands that firefighters make heroic stands to save houses from approaching wildfires.

What struck Lincoln was how entire subdivisions rolled over the rough mountain landscape nestled into the forest and shielded from view from the main road. And not all of these homes looked new. In fact, from his observations, many seemed quite old.

Over the past twenty years, a changing climate, population growth near forests and rangelands, and the buildup of brush and other fuels have dramatically increased the severity of wildfires and the damage that they cause to our natural lands and communities. Year after year, fire seasons grow longer and longer, destroying homes, threatening critical infrastructure and the watersheds that provide clean drinking water to millions of people. Between 1980 and 2011, the average annual number of fires on Federal land more than doubled, and the total area burned annually tripled. Even as fire seasons have grown, the way we pay to fight these fires remains unchanged – and fundamentally broken.

The Forest Service’s firefighting appropriation has rapidly increased as a proportion of the Forest Service’s overall budget, increasing from 16 percent in 1995 to 42 percent today. As the costs of wildfires have spiraled out of control, it has shrunk the budget of other Forest Service programs, taking millions of dollars from other critical forest health and land management priorities in order to pay for them. What’s more, often the programs we are forced to divert funds from are the very programs which help to mitigate the impact of wildfires.

In the Flat Tops Wilderness of Colorado, there is a grand rock formation named the Amphitheatre that serves as the backdrop for the overlook to Trappers Lake known as the Cradle of Wilderness.

The area forms a sort of natural amphitheater of majestic volcanic cliffs, 320 surface acres of pristine lake and majestic volcanic rock cliffs and an expansive sky. The area holds a sacred place in history for those who cherish the values and spirit of wilderness.

It will also be the site of a panel discussion on the “Wilderness Idea” on Aug. 22 from 10 a.m. to noon MST as the White River National Forest commemorates the Cradle of Wilderness area as part of the 50^th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964.  The public is invited to tune in to this live stream event.

Plants provide us with many things that we use on a daily basis – from the buildings in which we live and work, to our clothing and food. For flowering plants to thrive and reproduce, they often rely on pollinators to transport pollen between flowers.

Pollination ultimately results in fruits and seeds, ranging from the strawberries and almonds in your breakfast to the tomatoes in your pasta sauce. While scientists know a lot about honeybees, very little is known about many other pollinators – bats, birds, bees, butterflies, moths, flies, etc. – that are essential to pollinating wildflowers and native plants.

Inner city youth helped protect an ancient forest wilderness in the Siuslaw National Forest by spending a day removing invasive tansy ragwort.

High school students from the Inner City Youth Institute  in Portland, Oregon, arrived in the Drift Creek Wilderness near the Alsea River, where Douglas fir and western hemlock make up the largest stand of old-growth rainforest in the Oregon Coast Range.

“We love coming to the Siuslaw,” said institute group leader, Stacey Sowders. “We love this chance to do meaningful work and meet people who are so passionate about what they do.”

Jennifer Heisey Barnhart has always loved the outdoors so it’s only logical that all of her jobs have been working outdoors.

Jennifer is a fairly new employee of the U.S. Forest Service, currently working with the Andrew Pickens Ranger District on the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina for almost four years, but her experience as a natural resources specialist is many years strong.

“From a very young age, I’ve always found ways to have fun outdoors and learn about my natural resources,” Barnhart said. She has held jobs as a backcountry caretaker, trail maintenance, and recreation planner.

For young scientists, the years between completing a dissertation and becoming established in your field of research is sometimes an isolating time. The scholarly support of coursework is behind you just at the moment when you have refined your area of expertise.   As a research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service’s New York City Urban Field Station, I wanted to help bridge that gap by fostering a network of young scholars and engaging them in New York City as a living laboratory for urban research.

For three days, the Urban Field Station, located at Fort Totten in Queens, New York City, served as a home base for scientists participating in a workshop titled, “Urban Natures: Engaging Social Science Perspectives.” The workshop was a rare opportunity for Ph.D. candidates and early-career faculty members in disciplines including geography, environmental psychology, natural resource management, and environmental studies, to explore the connections between research and practice in social-ecological systems in a peer-to-peer setting.

A group of 20 determined firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit completed a demanding and extensive certification process to become the first Interagency Hotshot Crew from Lake Tahoe.  Formerly the Tallac Hand Crew, the Tallac Hotshots join an exclusive group of roughly 2,000 firefighters across the country.

“The certification of the Tallac Hotshots is a significant event for the Lake Tahoe Basin,” said Forest Supervisor Nancy Gibson.  “Fire suppression in the Basin is vital to our communities and it’s reassuring, particularly in light of the anticipated active fire season, to have such a key resource of well-trained and experienced firefighters in our area.”