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Preparing for a career involves many steps, plus individual motivation as well as help from those who’ve gone before you.

That’s what a group of 60 Harpers Ferry Job Corps students explored recently during a recent training session related to job preparedness for the U.S. Forest Service. Their hearts and minds were focused on advancing their knowledge about Forest Service job opportunities and how to serve others but also on learning how to help themselves. They were not disappointed.

When U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan asked Anna Devolld, a ten year old child from Alaska, to flip the switch, a momentary hush came across the crowd as thousands of lights on a massive tree illumined the West Lawn just below both Houses of Congress.

More than a year of planning went into the lighting of the first US Capitol Christmas Tree from Alaska. Hand crafted ornaments made by hundreds of children and other folks in Alaska now bask in the glow of thousands of lights on the 74 ft. Lutz spruce harvested from the US Forest Service’s Chugach National Forest.

We cannot care for public forests and grasslands alone—the land benefits the most when communities join us and provide input to help shape forest plans. The U.S. Forest Service takes pride in being part of the communities we serve, whether by managing the land to be resilient to disturbance or as members of the public participating as citizens in the towns where we live and work.

Spurred by Secretary Tom Vilsack’s vision that emphasizes collaboration with stakeholders and restoration of the Nation’s forests, the Forest Service published the report Increasing the Pace of Restoration and Job Creation on Our National Forests in 2012. Since then, the agency has worked feverishly to build shared landscape ownership, anchored in understanding and appreciating of the diverse perspectives our community members bring to the table.

An uncontained forest fire burning in Greece, Germany, or the U.S. looks basically the same: they are all destructive. For this important reason, the U.S. Forest Service has a well-established international leadership role in wildland fire management.

The Fire and Aviation Management or FAM’s international program coordinates Forest Service leadership in wildland fire through three main efforts starting with support for international disasters. The next effort is mobilization of fire suppression resources in support of established bilateral arrangements, coordinated by the National Interagency Fire Center and finally through FAM’s international activities coordinated with the Forest Service’s International Programs Office.

Today, farms in the U.S. are larger and have less nearby habitat to support bees than in the past, yet the need for pollinators in rural landscapes has never been greater. In light of concerns over pollinator declines, a Memorandum was released by President Obama on June 20, 2014, Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Pollinators. Since the release of this Memorandum, USDA agencies have been taking additional steps to support pollinators.

One question many people are asking is: how can we incorporate more pollinator habitat into our communities, agricultural lands, and forests?

USDA celebrates National Native American Heritage Month in November with a blog series focused on USDA’s support of Tribal Nations and highlighting a number of our efforts throughout Indian Country and Alaska. Follow along on the USDA blog.

When you are faced with a big problem, it helps to have all your friends working together.

There’s a great example of this philosophy playing out in the Northwoods of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan between the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, an organization that supports the hunting, gathering, and fishing treaty rights of 11 member Ojibwe tribes and the U.S. Forest Service. Representatives of the Commission and Forest Service meet regularly to collaborate on a wide range of issues, including wildlife management, law enforcement, and youth education.

For over 90 years the majestic Lutz spruce stood silently in the Chugach National Forest near Seward, Alaska.

Hidden from most tourists, except intrepid hikers, the spruce, as high as a seven story building, would have aged in obscurity but for a stroke of luck: this Lutz spruce was chosen among the more than five million acres of the Chugach’s wooded forests to be the proverbial “People’s Tree” and grace the slope of the West Lawn on Capitol Hill just beneath the soaring white dome that unites both wings of Congress.

The river banks of the Upper Kenai and Russian Rivers in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula are known to attract some of the most avid fishermen. In the last couple decades, they have also lured a growing number of citizen volunteers who are equally passionate about an environmental stewardship mission to protect them.

The diverse system of plants that grow along the two rivers and their stream beds control erosion and help filter and keep those waters clean. But over decades of use, the numbers of anglers visiting these special places have left their mark.

Guest Post by Hannah Ettema of the National Forest Foundation.

It was like stepping back through time on the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Some 200 years ago, when bison prominently roamed the Illinois landscape, kicking up dust as they ran in the herd before settling against a back-drop of tall prairie grasses.

That scene from the past is actually part of the Midewin’s future as four bulls and 23 cows were introduced to their new 1,200 acre enclosure. The first to arrive were the bulls, one 2-year-old and three 3-year-olds, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo.

It’s been a busy few months for the Triple Nickles, the U.S. Forest Service’s first African-American smoke jumping crew. On Aug. 6 of this year a member of the crew who was the first recorded death of a hot shot wildland firefighter was posthumously honored at his gravesite that was recently found after a long search.

Seventy years ago, Pfc. Malvin L. Brown of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion known as the Triple Nickles, died while serving his country. Because of the racism prevalent in the segregated U.S military of the 1940s, Brown wasn't given a burial with the honors he had earned.