forestry

Students from Paul Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., found out the fastest way to find a forest within their urban community: walk outside.

Marla Emery looks at plantain – an ordinary weed to most people – with an eye on how some people will use it. After all, her work with the U.S. Forest Service as a research geographer leads her to interesting conversations with people who forage in rural and urban forests.

Pop music star Beyonce recently partnered with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative to create the Let’s Move! Flash Workout.  The Oconaluftee Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center in Cherokee, N.C. has embraced the Let’s Move! concept, and launched a Healthy Eating and Active Lifestyles program. Oconaluftee has gotten behind this national movement by producing a student fitness video using the music and choreography of the Let’s Move! Flash Workout. 

U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station is breaking out its 79-year-old collection of 20,000 fungus cultures – yes, the stuff that grows in dark, damp places – to help create a new 1,000-species fungal directory.

While people have squabbled over the direction of federal forest management, many landscapes have declined. Take southwestern ponderosa pine, for example. Where thick grasses once waved under big orange-barked pines, thickets of spindly trees now threaten natural and human communities alike through outbreaks of insects and disease, followed by devastating fires.

The annual ritual dance by the chicken-sized male Greater sage grouse attracts potential mates and perpetuates the species. However, this important mating ritual is a rare experience in the Devil’s Garden, a region in northeastern California where the greater sage grouse populations are in serious decline.

Oregon Wild works on wilderness protection, listing of indicator species, and protecting old-growth stands through legislative and administrates campaigns. They interact with the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service agencies located in Oregon to reduce the old-growth logged and increase the amount restored. In the past, they have been at odds with the agencies, but now, in some instances, they are seen partners.

“I’m originally from Michigan, where I grew up a ‘nature geek,’ wandering around the woods and countryside,” Chandra Le Gue, Old-Growth Campaign Coordinator for Oregon Wild explained. “From this experience, I gained a love for nature. I was really amazed at the natural beauty of Oregon when I moved here for my graduate studies. I fell in love with the forests and landscapes. Oregon Wild’s mission matched my ideology on the importance of these areas….and I have been with the organization now for six and a half years.”

Miles Cary Johnston lives in the rolling countryside east of Richmond, Va., on land that’s been owned by his family for more than 12 generations. His acreage in New Kent County stretches down to the Pamunkey River and includes open fields, mixed hardwood forests and 16 acres of pine he planted for timber production.

Johnston keeps track of what’s going on with his forest land, and in 2010, he figured it was time to thin his 16 acres of loblolly pines. The stand was starting to look closed in, and Johnston knew from his consulting forester that this would make his trees more susceptible to southern pine beetle, a native bark beetle considered the most destructive forest pest in the South.

Roughly 100 people shrugged off cold weather near Sedona, Ariz., to attend a Dutch oven cooking contest and talk about the Coconino National Forest’s work to create a motorized and non-motorized trail system on the Red Rock Ranger District.

The 65-foot white fir from California’s Stanislaus National Forest was harvested and embarked on its journey toward the nation’s capitol on Nov. 5.