forestry

Working collaboratively, the Fremont-Winema National Forest, Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust, Oregon Department of Fish, and Wildlife and Oregon Parks and Recreation Department are completing a restoration project designed to improve redband trout spawning and rearing habitat on the Lower Williamson River in south central Oregon.

In Scanning the Conservation Horizon, a report published by the National Wildlife Federation, with support from the U.S. Forest Service and other partners, scientists describe climate change as an increasing threat to species and ecosystems.

Some people dream about visiting the sandy beaches of Hawaii. But New Jersey native Ruth D’Amico always dreamed of exploring the mountains and oceans of Alaska.

The U.S. Forest Service fisheries biologist was always curious about nature and hoped to one day feed this love for wonder in Alaska. Hailing from a small town, D’Amico lived nowhere near a national forest and yearned to be around Alaska’s mountains that she read about as a child. Little did she know that she would one day call those Alaskan mountains home.

Like many national forests, Washington’s Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is home to visiting hikers, nature and recreation enthusiasts, fishers, and bird watchers.

One hour of hiking through rock towers and outcroppings daubed with wildflowers bring you to a stone staircase leading up to the deck of the Kelly Butte Lookout perched at 5,379 feet.

The U.S. Forest Service is partnering with the Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month (LSSM) initiative, scheduled for January 2012, encouraging Americans to explore winter recreation activities during the upcoming winter season.

October has arrived which means cooler days, fall foliage and continued opportunities to hike on Forest Service trails. Families and friends enjoy hiking together, whether a person uses a wheelchair,  is pushing a young child in a baby stroller, or they are looking for more controlled grades to enjoy together on  trails that comply with the Forest Service Trail Accessibility Guidelines.  People with and without disabilities enjoy recreating together. When one person in a group has a need for an accessible facility, the entire group seeks to recreate at that accessible facility together.

Held each October, National Disability Employment Awareness Month is a national campaign that raises awareness about disability issues and celebrates the many and varied contributions of America's workers with disabilities.

A Forest Service Recovery Act-funded arboriculture training program is helping young trainees learn basic tree care, nursery, and natural resource restoration skills while revitalizing urban areas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Local teens recently teamed up with the Forest Service to help clean-up an abandoned marijuana grow site on the Methow Valley Ranger District on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.

Risk management doesn’t mean trying to address all risks in all ways, “riding off in all directions,” spending money, time, energy, and social capital trying to drive every risk we identify to zero. There is no shortage of risks to manage. But neither does it mean just “hunkering down,” waiting to see what happens. No-action can be the riskiest action of all. And it’s not a very good way to learn. To learn forward, you have to lean forward. As my grandfather told me, “You can’t steer that bicycle unless you get it moving.”

Risk management is useful for helping us to decide and to explain how we have decided what not to do as much as what to do. It doesn’t make the decisions any easier, but it can help us make tradeoffs and opportunities more clear and guide us to making the highest possible reduction across multiple risks. We will need all the help we can get in sorting through which risks to handle first and how far to go in reducing particular risks.