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It takes a special person to spend two weeks of hard-earned vacation time delicately slicing through layers of soil to unearth the past as part of an archeological dig or hand sawing logs for re-birth of a worn-down historical cabin. The U.S. Forest Service has a deep appreciation for the thousands...

The gopher tortoise earned its name for good reason – because it likes to dig and spends much of its time underground. The gopher tortoise, the Southeast’s only land-dwelling tortoise, burrows in the sandy soils below longleaf pine forests where it can escape heat and danger. Its burrows are popular...

“Not today,” said Mr. Leonard Keyes as he and Dr. John Stanley surveyed the plot of land on Keyes’ farm in Mize, Mississippi. “ Too dry.” Stanley stood beside him holding a tray of squash transplants and nodding his head in agreement. Earlier that morning, Stanley, sourcing manager for Up in Farms...

The landscape modeling expertise Samuel Cushman provides as a research ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station is in demand worldwide as human-caused disturbances impact animal distribution, connectivity and survival. Whether it’s clouded leopards in Borneo, lions in...

Squeals of excitement and laughter competed with the sounds of power saws, drills and hammers at the Hungry Valley Child Care Center in Sparks, Nevada, as Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (RSIC) teens were handed power tools for the first time in their lives to assist with building a hoop house. As part of...

The greater sage grouse is an iconic bird that lives in the American West's sagebrush landscape. It’s also a species at the center of a nationwide debate focused on how best to manage its habitat to balance multiple uses and ensure the bird’s long-term survival. And the dialogue has just been...

(This guest blog describes how the Healthy Homes Partnership helped residents affected by recent flooding in Louisiana. Healthy Homes Partnership is an interagency program funded by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of...

Every year, the month of September is recognized as National Preparedness Month. It is a good time to think about emergency planning for any disaster or emergency. Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make an Emergency Communication Plan. Weather can be extremely unpredictable, as many communities throughout...

This past April, we woke up at 3 a.m. and made our way to a blind amid an expanse of sagebrush on a ranch in central Montana. When the sun rose that morning, I saw my first sage grouse--actually, I got to see more than 100 of them!--when the birds arrived at the lek site for their famous tail...

Throughout the course of the year, hired labor makes planting and harvesting of America’s farmland possible. On my family’s Illinois farm, we relied on both paid and unpaid friends and family to bring in our hay. Nearby farmers however relied on seasonal migrant labor to harvest vegetables. Today I...