forestry

We face multiple risks every day as resource managers. We are pretty good at intuitively understanding the likelihoods of different hazards, the uncertainties around them, and their potential impacts on the resources we value, and we use this understanding in our resource management decisions. But the risks we manage are rapidly changing with the climate. Sustainability can no longer presume stationarity. To sustain the benefits of our forests and grasslands, our risk management approach itself must adapt to changing means and extremes. We may have to become even better at the techniques and principles of risk management. Our experience and intuition will only take us so far in a rapidly changing world.

Risk can be defined as exposure to a chance of loss. Losses can be ecological, social, or economic, expressed in absolute terms or in a sense of failure to reach a goal or a desired condition. The link between exposure and loss is vulnerability, shaped by the likelihood and magnitude of hazards (stressors) and by the sensitivity of resources to stressors and its capacity to cope with and recover from stress. Understanding exposures, vulnerabilities, and losses and taking actions to reduce losses within the limits of financial and organizational capacities is the discipline of risk management. Risk management can allow us to capture opportunities as well as reduce or avoid losses. A stressor event – fire, epidemic, flood, landslide – can create opportunities for transition to more resilient conditions, for retreat from high exposure zones, or for learning to avoid similar losses in other places.

Thirty-five years ago, Joel Holtrop embarked on his lifelong dream of serving the U.S. Forest Service, eventually working in a variety of jobs across the United States. Soon, the Deputy Chief of the Forest Service will embark on a new chapter of his life after retiring from the agency in early October.

“It’s not sufficient if I’ve helped accomplish sustaining forests during the length of my career,” Holtrop said. “I’ve only done my job if I’ve set the stage for the generations beyond my career.”

President Obama has named Dr. Samuel L. Zelinka, a U.S. Forest Service scientist, as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. This year Dr. Zelinka joins 93 other scientists and researchers in the annual award.

Dr. Zelinka works at the U.S. Forest Services world renowned Forest Products Lab (FPL), in Madison, WI. His expertise is in corrosion of metal fasteners in wood, electrical properties of wood and research on wood-moisture relations.

Rare red foxes are making a surprising comeback according to U.S. Forest Service scientists who have released information claiming that at least six Sierra Nevada red foxes, a species once believed to have been nearly wiped out in the 1920s, are roaming in the wilderness south of Yosemite.

Although there is another known small population in another region of California the new find of just a half dozen of these fury and foxy animals still makes the species extremely rare. Now experts are expanding their studies in hopes of finding more red foxes in the Yosemite area.

Annual construction efforts on a multi-year restoration project to improve water quality and create high-quality fish habitat is currently in progress on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon.

In today's technological society, children have retreated from outdoor activities -- bike riding, tree climbing or clinging to a rope swing to drop into a river -towards entirely virtual activities, indoor adventures at the end of a power cord.

A few years ago, researchers and educators gave this trend a name: nature deficit disorder.

Two-thirds of Maine's population or about 780,000 residents live in the "wildland-urban interface.”  In these areas structures intermingle with natural vegetation, and wildfire threatens lives, homes, and property.

The Maine Forest Service’s Division of Forest Protection established a Wildland-Urban Interface Committee in 2004 to facilitate completion of Community Wildfire Protections Plans in these areas. More than 4,500 homes were assessed to determine their risk factors. Of the homes surveyed, 88 percent were at “extreme” or “high” risk of ignition in a wildfire because of fuels buildup.

While invasive insect species are widely recognized as being among the greatest threats to biodiversity and ecosystem stability worldwide, there has been little research into their economic impact on the national level especially for non-native invasive species.

Many examples come to mind like the devastation caused by the native bark beetle in Colorado and surrounding states. However, what most don’t realize is that the threat from non-native insect species is equally if not more costly to U.S. tax payers.

Mount Roosevelt in South Dakota is maintained by the Black Hills National Forest as a recreational trail and picnic area where the  5,690-foot summit is dominated by the Friendship Tower--- a stone memorial that rises about 25 feet above the surrounding meadow.

Friendship Tower was built by Seth Bullock in 1919 in honor of his friend President Theodore Roosevelt.  Bullock, a former sheriff of Deadwood, S.D.,  wanted to create a memorial of his friend’s life and a place where people could view wide open spaces that both Bullock and Roosevelt had become so fond of during their lives. He had met Roosevelt, then a deputy sheriff from Medora, N.D., in 1884. The two quickly became lifelong friends, Roosevelt later saying of Bullock, "Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest type of frontiersman."

Recently I got an intimate tour of a longleaf pine forest, a rapidly vanishing Southeastern ecosystem that is home to one-of-a-kind wildlife. Longleaf pines once dominated the landscape of coastal Mississippi, but deforestation and urbanization have decreased both these forests and the unique plants and animals that call them home.