Game Wardens are unknown to most people. They typically patrol remote areas and have a reputation for simply checking licenses and limits. In these times, when police-community relations have become so important, it’s certainly worthwhile to understand what game wardens actually can do to avoid conflicts, as their job is unique and extends beyond what many other law enforcement officers do.

Game wardens are known by various names, including conservation officers, conservation police, wildlife enforcement agents, fish wardens, fish and game wardens, rangers, etc. In most states game wardens are part of a state resources agency, with the exception of Oregon and Alaska, where they’re part of the state troopers. Regardless of what they’re called, all game wardens enforce wildlife law and a lot more.

There are more than 765,000 full-time, and 44,000 part-time, sworn federal, state and local law enforcement officers in the United States: almost 400 officers per 100,000 population, with the most officers in major cities. In contrast, nationwide there are about as many state game wardens as the New York Police Department assigns to the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square — about 7,000. If you add federal conservation law enforcement officers, the total conservation law enforcement officer population for the U.S. barely nears 8,000.

Until about 10 years ago, I didn’t know much about game wardens, even though since the 1970s, I’ve worked on various aspects of environmental conservation at the local, state and national levels. I’d twice been checked by a game warden who wanted to see my fishing license or catch, but that was it.

That changed in 2006 when the California Fish and Game Wardens Association asked my son and I to produce a documentary film about them, as California had the lowest ratio of game wardens per capita in the U.S. — only 200 in the field for 38 million people — and wildlife crime in the state was estimated at more than $100 million a year and increasing.

When we said we were interested, the wardens said that the best way to learn about them was through first-hand experience. A week later, I climbed in a patrol truck with warden Lieutentant John Laughlin for an afternoon patrol.

The patrol began at a park on the east bank of the Sacramento River where people were fishing for shad, striped bass, sturgeon and salmon. One of the first things I noticed in John’s truck was that he had both a rifle and a shotgun, and he was carrying a pistol. I asked John about the firepower. He replied that wardens typically work alone in remote areas where there’s no back-up and carry a rifle, a .308 — more powerful than most police carry — because wardens might have to shoot through brush. He added, they also are issued a second concealed handgun, “just in case.”

Laughlin was wearing a dark green uniform with badge clearly identifying him as a state game warden. He said that wardens also work in plain clothes, and there was a special operations unit that does long-term covert investigations.

We spotted several fishermen, and John set off on foot to check licenses and catches. The river level was relatively low, and there was a high bank. As we reached the river, what initially looked like one man, turned out to be seven.

John said to me, “Stay on the bank and keep an eye out for unusual things while I go down and check them. You’re now my back-up.”

As John approached the first man, I saw a knife laying on top of his tackle box. No doubt they all had knives. It was all legal and normal, but John was outnumbered by seven armed men.

As John began to check licenses, one of the men set off for his car at a brisk pace. I called to John and he pursued the guy on foot, catching up with him before he could drive away.

The man had a fishing license on a chord around his neck, which is the law in California, but it was for the previous year. He insisted that his current license was at home. John listened patiently and said that he was supposed to have a current license with him.

As he was writing up the ticket, John called in the man’s name and driver’s license number to see if he had any outstanding warrants. The man had a clean record, so John told him how to respond to the ticket.

As we walked to the next group of fishermen, John explained that California game wardens enforce wildlife law, as well as criminal, civil and traffic law, conduct search and rescue and do their own crime scene investigation. They are also deputy U.S. Marshalls, enabling them to work interstate cases and bring in people who are avoiding warrants. The dangers of checking for warrants were demonstrated in 2007, when California Game Warden Joshua Brennan came into a campground and found that 39-year-old Bartyn Pitts had set an illegal campfire. When Brennan called central dispatch while writing the citation, he was told that there was an outstanding warrant for Pitts in Hawaii. Brennan told Pitts he was going to arrest him. Pitts got a shotgun and started shooting at Brennan, who defended himself, killing Pitts.

SEARCH WARRANTS, PROBABLE CAUSE AND EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES

John walked up to a group of fishermen and began to open ice chests and containers as he talked to them. It seemed to me that this would have been an illegal search for a police officer. When he was finished, John explained that because wardens usually work far from towns and have to perform compliance checks, getting a search warrant for every contact they make would be impossible. Wardens can legally inspect everything without a warrant except the clothing worn by a person, because of “exigent circumstances.”

Each state’s laws that game wardens enforce are somewhat different, but most allow them to conduct extended searches. In California it’s a crime to refuse to show a wildlife officer “… all licenses, tags, and the birds, mammals, fish, reptiles or amphibians taken or otherwise dealt with under this code, and any device or apparatus designed to be, and capable of being, used to take birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, or amphibians.” The U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court both have affirmed this.

John next checked four fishermen. John is 6’2” and plays football in a police league. Three of these guys were bigger than him. All were carrying knives and one had a gun. He had a hunting license and duck season had just started. It was legal, but it drove home the fact that wardens almost always encounter armed people.

These guys were very nice. One had his son with him. John gave the young boy a “Deputy Game Warden” sticker to wear.

RISK-TAKING

As we moved away from town, the banks along the river became a tangle of trees and brush. John checked a couple more fishermen and then we came upon a car with expired plates parked in a thicket. John called in the car’s plates. It was stolen.

Suddenly things changed.

Walking around the car, John picked up a trail of footprints that led into the thicket. The aroma of smoke, food and marijuana were in the air. John told me that back-up was 45 minutes away. He planned to investigate. If I wanted to follow him, he said I should stay back a few paces and, if anything should happen, I should run to the truck to radio it in to the dispatcher and then disappear.

John cautiously approached the camp with a smoldering fire pit, tarp shelter and piles of beer peared into the brush. As he reported the situation to the dispatcher, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Half an hour later, we came on a man living out of his car parked by the river. John talked with him for some time. The guy was coping — barely. John reported him to the local dispatcher. As we drove off, John said that it was becoming more common to find people who were homeless and living on wildlands. On national forest or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, one could camp for up to two weeks and then move for another two week-stay, but others try to hide and even build shelters.

John drove to a stretch of river where people regularly gathered at night to fish, drink and sell drugs. There was garbage strewn over the entire area. He said that almost every time he checked that area he made at least one arrest. He added that wardens also patrol by boat, but there were not that many patrol boats. They also use airplanes, but again, there are not nearly enough to cover all patrol areas.

On the way back to the office, John talked about some recent cases: caviar poachers snagging sturgeon; guys using ATV’s to chase down sturgeon stranded in shallow water; a meth lab bust in a state forest; people setting fires “for fun;” and some suspicious people training with military weapons in a remote area.

John was interrupted when a car coming from the opposite direction swerved across the road in front of us and pulled into a gas station. John had to slow down to avoid a collision. He quickly turned on his flashing lights and siren, did a U-turn, drove into the gas station, parked and approached the driver, who said he was in a hurry for an appointment. John ended up writing him a ticket for reckless driving.

It was the end of the day for me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. As I exited the truck, John noted that wardens work out of a home office and are on call 24/7, so his day was just starting.

GETTING TO KNOW THE THIN GREEN LINE

From 2007-2009, we went on many ride-alongs with wardens on land, water, snowy mountains and in the air, as well as take-downs of organized crime. Many patrols were in remote areas, but several ventured into big cities. We had many more lessons about the uniqueness of game wardens.

1) Enforcing the “Public Trust Doctrine” — Wild fish and animals are public property managed by state governments. Migratory birds are managed also by the federal government. According to the Public Trust Doctrine, wardens can come onto private land without permission or a warrant to inspect.

2) Federal Conservation Officers — Each federal conservation agency also has law enforcement officers:

• U.S. Forest Service: 660 uniformed law
  enforcement officers (LEOs) and 250 undercover
  special agents.
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: 140 uniformed
  wildlife inspectors at airports, sea ports and
  borders, with refuge rangers for the 560 National
  Wildlife Refuges, and 261 Special Agents.
• Bureau of Land Management: 300 special
  agents and rangers, primarily in western states.
• National Park Service: 3,861 rangers and special
  agents to enforce state and federal laws on
  409 areas, covering more than 84 million acres in
  every state and U.S. territory

3.) Being a Game Warden is Dangerous — According to California game warden Jerry Karnow, there have been 10 shootings involving game wardens in the state in the last seven years. This puts them on equal terms with police officers in some of the worst urban neighborhoods and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents.

On another ride-along, we joined Lieutentant John Nores, who is part of an interagency MET (Marijuana Eradication Team) tactical team of local, state and federal officers, as they eradicated 20,000 marijuana plants in two cartel marijuana grows in a regional park south of San Francisco.

Walking into a grow after it was secured, we had to follow John’s footsteps to avoid trip wires and pitfalls. The grow was in a forest. At the perimeter, we passed through a chicken wire fence used to keep out rabbits. Boxes of rat poison were everywhere, along with tents, cots, propane tanks, ammo boxes, fertilizer, pesticides and garbage, all camouflaged. The natural understory plants under the forest canopy had been removed, and in their place there were five-feet-tall marijuana plants. Each plant was worth at least a $1,000 street value. Black plastic irrigation pipelines were everywhere. Each plant had its own drip irrigation system connected to a timer. The irrigation water containing illegal fertilizers and pesticides came from a nearby dammed stream. This camp appeared to be only for growing marijuana, while some sites are also used as meth labs. Another 10,000 plants were removed. In 2015, MET team raids confiscated plants estimated at $65 million in street value.

MET averages at least one gunfight per year for the last 10 years. In 2005, a warden was shot and seriously wounded in an ambush, a grower was killed and another was seriously wounded. In April 2015, a California game warden shot and killed a grower who pulled a gun on him when a grow on a wildlife refuge was discovered.

As border security has increased, cartels have increased marijuana grows on U.S. soil. Marijuana grows have been found on federal, state and local wildlands in at least 20 states. Almost 4 million plants are removed from illegal grows on public lands nationwide every year. This is estimated as less than 20 percent of what’s actually out there.

Game wardens also play an important role in countering terrorism. Six months prior to 9/11, California game warden Zeke Awbrey was on patrol in a desert area of Southern California when he heard gunshots from automatic weapons. Awbrey called in sheriff deputies. They found a group of men with truckloads of ammunition firing some automatic weapons. The weapons were confiscated, and the incident was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one is certain what happened after that, but on 9/11 two of the men who happened to be in that group flew the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Right after 9/11, all the field wardens in California were called up to help patrol borders.

Get to know your local warden. You will never forget the experience, and they will appreciate it. The Thin Green Line needs all the support they can get.

James A. Swan, Ph.D. is a Co-Executive Producer of the “Wild Justice” TV show on the National Geographic Channel, and the author and coauthor of 10 books, including co-authoring with Lt. John Nores, War In The Woods: Combating the Marijuana Cartels on Our Public Wildlands, which is in development as a feature film.

The post Thin Green Line: The Heroic Work of Game Wardens appeared first on American Forests.

By Tyler Williams; Photography by Tyler Williams

The drive toward Duck Lakes Basin is nothing spectacular. Dry open slopes border the road, with occasional glimpses of snow-covered Mt. Shasta offering distant, untouchable scenery. Within a mile of the trailhead, however, a forest begins to close overhead, maples and cedars shroud clear little creeks and the place feels like maybe, in a foggy dusk, it just might hold a Sasquatch.

Still, even after setting out on foot, up old logging roads, it does not feel terribly exotic. There are the six standard conifers of the region — one cedar, two firs and three pines — but two of those, Jeffrey and ponderosa pine, are almost indistinguishable. It hardly feels like a conifer Mecca.

That all changes with the bizarre dangling fronds of a Brewer spruce.

This is a tree straight out of a children’s fantasy novel: hauntingly droopy, brooding, dark, other worldly. It contrasts sharply with the tight organized needles of a nearby Shasta fir and seems to fit in better with the soft boughs of a mountain hemlock, which unexpectedly leans out over the closed road. Suddenly all the trees are bigger, and a long corridor leads into the kingdom, as if some great mystery were about to be revealed.

New species come at every turn; Pacific yew, western white pine, Englemann spruce and the common, but out of place, tree that first gave this basin botanical significance 40 years ago when it was discovered here — subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Subalpine fir grows from Arizona’s sky islands to arctic Alaska, but it is noticeably absent in much of California. So, when botanists John Sawyer and Dale Thornburg came across a subalpine fir here in 1969, it was a Holy Grail moment. Their revelations led them to coin the Duck Lakes Basin “The Miracle Mile,” because within that mile one could find 18 different species of conifer, a higher concentration than anywhere in North America.

This basin is but one jewel within a region boasting 38 types of conifer, the second-most diverse assemblage in the world. Only the tropical isle of New Caledonia claims more, with 44 different trees. And, while the boundaries of an island like New Caledonia are clear, the parameters of North America’s conifer cradle are not as easily drawn. The generally accepted borders extend from California’s Yolla Bolly Mountains in the south to Oregon’s Siskiyou Range in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the west to Mt. Shasta in the east. The district is separate from the sodden Cascade Range, sequestered from the snowy Sierra Nevada, and squeezed between the Great Basin Desert and the moist Pacific. It is a crumpled conglomeration of geography sharing elements with all these eco-regions, a botanical melting pot on the fringe of the continent. Titles for the area reflect the nebulous boundaries: far northwestern California, the Redwood Coast, the Klamath River Ranges or simply Klamath Country. The most descriptively poignant term ever coined came from author David Rains Wallace, whose title for his 1983 naturalist’s classic created an enduring label — The Klamath Knot.

Spawned partially from Wallace’s seminal tome, Conifer Country is the latest in Knot literature. Part field guide and part hiking guide, it is the product of scientist, explorer, conifer-crazy author Michael Edward Kauffmann, who shares a detectable passion for his subject. The last hike listed in the book is a 400-mile-long route that passes 32 conifer species on a winding course from mountaintop to sea. It’s doubtful that anyone has completed the traverse,
except, of course, Kauffmann himself. He did it in 2009, and he called it “The Bigfoot Trail.”

The legendary forest beast became inextricably linked with the region in 1955, when size 30 plaster cast footprints were produced from the dirt near logging machinery. Even today, a fascination for the forest beast persists. As I wheeled into the backcountry resupply town of Happy Camp, three statues of the secretive ape leered at me before I passed a Bigfoot deli, Bigfoot RV park and Bigfoot towing service. It’s no stretch to see how Klamath Country has remained ground zero for Sasquatch lore. Scattered communities like this are reached only after driving a web of curvy mountain roads that climb over ridges and trace narrow cuts above steep river canyons, all of it cloaked in forest. My route turned so often through the mountain maze that I was forced to stop regularly and check my map, sorting through a disorganized matrix of river drainages that seem to be tossed randomly across the landscape.

I wasn’t tracing Kauffmann’s epic route, but I still hoped to find the biggest, strangest and most diverse collections of trees during my conifer cruise, which meant visiting the nine separate ranges of the Klamath Mountain complex. Geologists will tell us that the area is a scramble of continental accretions, which is sort of like a messy pile of table scraps leftover from the Pacific Plate’s crash into North America.

Duck Lakes Basin, my first stop, was near the eastern margin of that mountainous heap, four ranges removed from the damp ocean airmass, but also perched at the apex of a topographic “V” that funnels northerly weather straight in to nurture those sneaky subalpine firs.

After botanists Sawyer and Thornburg found the trees, they conducted chemical analysis of the needles to see if there was correlation with Cascadian firs, or the slightly different Rocky Mountain variety. The two have different evolutionary backgrounds, and the interior firs might have migrated west, it was thought, across arid eastern Oregon during the Pleistocene ice ages. It turned out that the Duck Lake firs were actually borne of the nearer Cascades, having drifted south to find final refuge here in the Knot. There are others with a similar story. Alaska cedar, western redcedar, Pacific silver fir, grand fir, Sitka spruce and Western hemlock all find their southern limits in Klamath Country.

These trees can grow here because this is the southern edge of the Pacific Northwest, where storms sweep down from the Gulf of Alaska in relentless waves, their trailing bands of moisture steering inland with the help of Cape Mendocino — that bulge of land nudging outward along California’s northern coast. Yet, sometimes those storms slip past to the north, as if reacting to the political boundary of the Oregon state line. So, Klamath Mediterranean-type climate, bringing reliably dry summers that suit species from the south. Country is often defined by California’s trademark Mediterranean-type climate, bringing reliably dry summers that suit species from the south.

Approaching a trailhead in the Trinity Mountains, I passed some of the northernmost gray pines, those small charismatic beacons of Sierra Nevada foothills. Minutes later, I was marching up a granite valley reminiscent of the Sierra, echoing with waterfalls and sprinkled in white fir, another species that grows here, but no farther north. Jeffrey pine, too, reaches its northern range limit in the Klamath. One of them stopped me cold, as all great trees do, with pure breathtaking eminence as I attempted to walk past. The tree was more than 200 feet tall, reigning over an otherwise impressive grove of cedar and fir. After a half-hour of oogling and photographing, I picked up a cone. Prickly, small, not Jeffrey-like — this tree was actually a ponderosa pine, and it was one of the five biggest in the world, I’d later learn. In the Klamath, you never know what you might find.

Climate and topography are principal elements of Klamath overlap, but the strangest botanical settings of all in these mountains come from an unusual geologic circumstance — serpentine. The oldest rock layers here contain a high concentration of minerals, mostly iron and magnesium, which have seeped down over millennia from overlying layers to collect at the bottom. There they might have remained far from the light of day, but in the folded and eroded Klamaths, these ultramafic rocks are sometimes exposed. Where this happens, few trees grow despite excellent climatic conditions, because they cannot deal with the highly mineralized soil. The result is a botanical collection of tolerant endemic plants and a sparse landscape of stunted, slow growing trees, mostly cypresses and pines, often existing in close proximity to a rich mixed conifer forest.

Even beyond the serpentine barrens, the area is not complete rainforest like similar near-ocean mountains are farther north. One minute you are in a lush grotto that feels like the trees might go on forever, the next you might be cowering from a hot sun in shadeless chaparral. As I approached the South Fork of the Trinity River at a place called Hellgate, where Kauffmann teases “some of the largest specimens of Pacific yew” live, hillsides of scattered live oak wrinkled in summer heat, and I couldn’t think of anything but reaching the cool green water. Shade-loving yews seemed a long ways off. But, the slopes of the river canyon did hold surprisingly large Douglas-firs, trees that were probably 500 years old or more, having survived dozens of forest fires to reach that stature. The hot hillsides above were easily forgotten amid the distracting giants, and just as I remembered my reason for being there, Kauffmann’s yew trees, there they were.

Yew trees are not a jaw-droppingly large or picturesque species. Twisted and often half dead, their mosaic red bark is their most visually striking feature, and only someone who is familiar with the tree will appreciate a big, old yew, which is not much bigger than a teenage Douglas-fir. But, what they lack in grandeur they redeem in character, with branches that spread and twist like arthritic fingers. Instead of cones, unusual berry-like red balls called arils hang from their boughs. They congregated along the edge of the river like wise old men, enjoying the shade of the tall firs and the cool breeze over the water to make a long life, all just below mountainsides that burst into flame twice a decade.

Three thousand feet above the South Fork yews, the longest continuous ridge in the United States forms a neat border between mountains and coast. I stood on its crest in an aromatic ocean breeze, then turned to gaze through hot hazy layers of topography to the snow cone of Mt. Shasta, one hundred miles inland. The ridge is called South Fork Mountain, but if a forester had named it they’d have called it mountain of the firs, because covering the escarpment were white firs, grand firs, Shasta firs and the non-fir, (technically a Pseudotsuga, not an Abies) Douglas-fir. Each species had a distinctive look and presence, yet all co-mingled in a luxuriant carpet of soft green.

Near the high point of South Fork Mountain, I scouted for Shasta firs that displayed characteristics of their northern relative, the noble fir, but a forest fire had recently raged across the ridgeline, leaving a blackened landscape right to the top of mature 150-foot-tall trees. The view is open now, but the unique transition zone, one of the fundamental pieces of Klamath overlap, is gone for our lifetimes.

If there is any solace in this loss, it can be found in the very nature of the Knot itself, because the forests of the Klamath are a window to epochs past. The greatest forest the earth has ever known occurred 65 million years ago, when today’s American West was a relatively narrow peninsula between great seas which transported warm moist air all the way to northern latitudes. This Arcto-Tertiary forest was a menagerie of wildly different species; magnolia, fig, redwood, cypress. As the continents shifted and the oceans retracted and mountains grew, the Arcto-Tertiary forest withdrew. Fragments of the great woods found refuge in mountainous redoubts where the climate was similar enough to old times that some species could hang on.

The Brewer spruce is one of those relicts, existing now along with numerous new faces in the forest. The fact that so many species live in one particular region is really just a quirk of time, a perfect combination of geology, topography and climate. No human ever had the opportunity to witness the Arcto-Tertiary forest, and it’s likely that no human will ever again get to see the Shasta/noble fir hybrids of South Fork Mountain. We do, however, happen to be here when hemlocks, cedars, firs and pines all share a single grove, when relicts of the past meet conditions of the future, when south and north and east and west all meet to produce a place with more than 30 conifers, all at once.

Now is the time, and the place is the Klamath.

Tyler Williams is a big-tree hunter, adventure seeker and author of Big Tree Hikes of the Coast: A Guide to the Giants. To learn more, visit his website www.funhogpress.com.

The post Conifer Cruising appeared first on American Forests.

By Betsy L. Howell; All photography courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service

Four days before I arrived in Republic, Wash., to begin an assignment as a resource advisor on the North Star Fire, the town was ready to evacuate. That Saturday evening, firefighters watched from the U.S. Forest Service Ranger Station as flames began moving down Copper Mountain just south of town. Many of the 1,100 residents had packed their cars and loaded up their pets. They, too, watched from porches and the highest point in town, the cemetery. The evacuation plan called for heading east along State Route 20, up to the Kettle Crest, a long north-south ridge separating the Sanpoil River from the Kettle River. The ultimate call never arrived. At the last minute, bulldozer lines, along with a shift in wind and a drop in temperature, encouraged the flames to settle and even fade out along the fire’s leading edge. Now, it was Wednesday. A gentle, north wind had pushed much of North Star’s smoke south down the Sanpoil River Valley. Upon my arrival in town, I found Republic’s residents going about their business in a hopeful manner. Still, when we spoke, their eyes would turn nervously toward the south.

North Star, a massive wildfire that began burning in northeastern Washington State in August 2015, was referred to by newspapers and experts as a “mega-fire.” Ultimately determined to be human-caused, it was estimated at more than 200,000 acres in early-September 2015, a mere two weeks after it began. The bulk of the fire burned on the Colville Indian Reservation south of Republic, while fewer acres, though by no means small amounts, burned portions of the Okanogan-Wenatchee and Colville National Forests.

Traveling to North Star was my second trip to eastern Washington during the 2015 fire season. Where I live on the Olympic Peninsula, adjacent the Pacific Ocean and one of the rainiest places in the world, we had also had a wildfire burning since May. Consequently, even biologists like me, who don’t normally work much on wildland fires, were working them last season. During my first tour on the east side, I had been assigned to two different fires, 300 and 500 acres in size respectively. That was the end of July. The situations were serious, with towns and municipal watersheds, as well as habitat for federally listed species, threatened, yet the sizes of the blazes were manageable, and they responded in predictable ways to fire suppression efforts.

By mid-August, however, everything had changed.

A lightning storm had ignited dozens of fires across Washington and Oregon. Northern California was erupting with fire behavior that didn’t conform to either computer fire models or to the experience of many seasoned firefighters. Descriptions of wild and urban areas being consumed in only hours and fires jumping major highways and large lakes became quotidian reporting. Forests were being lost, and so were people. My first week back at my regular job in Olympic National Forest, three firefighters were killed in eastern Washington. Members of an engine crew, they’d become trapped when the fire suddenly changed direction and triggered a series of catastrophic events.

A week and a half after this tragedy, I once again drove east over the Cascade Mountains to North Star. The nation was now at a Wildfire Preparedness Level 5. This is the highest designation possible and one that reflected the number of major incidents and resources, including people, equipment and aircraft, committed to suppression. Still, there was not enough. Because of a lack of resources, some fires, if not threatening people or homes, were simply monitored and not actively suppressed. Firefighters were arriving from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to help.

Every business in Republic had a sign in the window that read, “Thank You, Firefighters!” This gratitude also resulted in a generous coffee fund available for fire personnel at Java Joy’s right before the turnoff to the Sanpoil River. One woman at Anderson’s Grocery, keying in immediately on my yellow fire shirt and green pants, said gratefully, “Having you people here has really calmed everyone.” Another person on the street thanked me for all I had done. When I explained that this was only my second day in town and that I hadn’t even seen the fire, she smiled. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

At the Republic Drugstore, I asked the pharmacist for something to help me sleep. I felt glad to be in town and to help however I could, but worry over the second tremendous fire season in a row (2014 had been a record-breaker in Washington State) had kept me awake for several nights. He nodded, looking tired himself, while the cashier thanked me for coming to Republic. She handed me a souvenir key chain.

The last large fire near Republic was the White Mountain Complex of 1988, a sizeable event for the time of approximately 20,000 acres. Bleached snags still stand east of town along highway 20; a green enthusiastic understory grows beneath. Unlike on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to the west where fire is more common, this part of eastern Washington has not had the annual experience of a shutdown tourism industry, closed roads and endless, smoke-filled weeks. Republic, with store facades that call up an earlier time and buildings no higher than two stories, had been stunned by North Star’s vitality. School was delayed and the county fair cancelled altogether. A mural along Main Street conveyed the making of Republic through the growth of the local hydroelectric industry and the taming of the region’s rivers. It seemed clear that this little western town, like so many others, struggled with reminders of how little humans at times can control their environments.

Without question, those most affected by wildfires are the people who have died fighting them and their mourning families, as well as those who have lost their homes or seen their businesses collapse. Yet, the environmental and economic consequences of fires today affect us all. The loss of forests, the degradation of water quality, the destruction of fish and wildlife habitat that we will not see replaced in our lifetimes, are all serious matters. Politically, the situation is also very complicated. Some land managers feel more timber harvest is the answer, while others think fires should just be allowed to burn. Neither of these extreme options are practical or beneficial to the majority of people and wildlife species, so the answer must be found somewhere in the middle. For the five weeks prior to coming to North Star, my mind had been spinning with this predicament and numbers and statistics of wildfires that are difficult to comprehend. In my short 30 years of working around fire, I have seen astonishing changes. For example, in the fall of 1987, I was part of a 20-person crew on the Silver Complex in southwest Oregon. Begun by lightning on August 30 that year, Silver, an event notable at the time for its size and duration, was not declared controlled until November 9. A tally board in fire camp marking the fire’s growth was updated each day and documented Silver’s approach to the 100,000-acre mark. Before my crew left in mid-October, it had achieved this goal. Today, six-figure-acre fires are still noteworthy, but they are not uncommon. “Big” simply does not describe anymore what is happening on the landscape.

Part of my job as a resource advisor is to find ways to minimize impacts from suppression work on valued forest resources, such as fish and wildlife habitat, archaeological sites, campgrounds and trails. This is more easily done when a fire is moving at a pace that offers some possibility of stopping it. When it doesn’t, the emphasis of my work turns to creating a repair plan for afterward. Such a plan may include fixing damaged livestock fences, returning fire lines to more natural appearances, re-closing roads (or reopening them, depending on their status prior to the fire) and restoring stream and wetland systems where equipment and crews have been working. There is a crucial distinction when assessing this workload: that which was caused by the fire itself and that caused by suppression activities. It’s a question of who can be billed, with Mother Nature being notoriously difficult to collect from.

My task one cool, September morning after arriving at North Star involved mapping a bulldozer line off a road that led to Deep Creek, a tributary of the Sanpoil River. The word “Sanpoil” comes from the indigenous Okanagan language and means “gray as far as one can see.” This proved an apt term for the smoky conditions in the valley that day.

I had driven not more than one-tenth of a mile along the road before I encountered a burned tree, fallen and blocking the way. Though there was now little active fire in this area, trees weakened by intense heat around their roots would be coming down for months. Within a few minutes after I requested assistance from an engine crew, Michael Cramer from Chewack Wildfire arrived with two assistants and several chainsaws. Michael, who went by the name of Cosmo, had a bright, smiling face and an enthusiastic handshake. Shortly after cutting out the first tree, we encountered another one down, a 40-inch Ponderosa pine, broken in two across the road and still burning. Yellow and orange flames licked furiously at the tree’s core as Cosmo began cutting out the burning part.

As we moved closer toward Deep Creek, we found more trees down. Most were mature pines and all had snapped at their bases. While the crew cut the trees into pieces, I took photos and made notes. Unlike other parts of North Star, the forest around Deep Creek appeared less a victim of fire and more a cooperator in the dynamic forces shaping wildland ecosystems. Chipmunks and squirrels scurried about, collecting seeds and mushrooms in the unburned portions of ground. Overhead, songbirds and ravens took advantage of insects displaced by the fire and smoke.

When we finally reached Deep Creek, we found a small herd of cattle. A few animals were grazing while others rested along the stream. Cosmo and I looked at them through our binoculars. Some cows had blue ear tags, others green and still others red or white. This rainbow of colors indicated individuals from different herds, and the mixing that had occurred during the fire’s zenith. I felt immensely relieved to see these cows and calves looking healthy and uninjured.

Mackenzie Wilson is from Curlew, Wash., 15 miles north of Republic. At the time of North Star, she was 25 years old, had the sturdy build of a farm girl and had worked as an engine foreman at her previous job. She’d left the eastside to attend Western Washington University in Bellingham, but now had returned to where she grew up and was working as a forestry technician in Colville National Forest. When I met Mackenzie, she did not seem given to unnecessary smiling and maintained a practical, efficient manner. She also was not the least bit sentimental.

Before going to Deep Creek, I had been with Mackenzie in the Scatter Creek watershed, just west of the Sanpoil River. We’d had an engine crew with us that day as well to cut out trees that had fallen across the road. Injured cattle had been reported in the area the day before and we also encountered them, all lying down. While the engine crew filled containers of water for the animals, Mackenzie said matter-of-factly that they would likely have to be put down. One large black and white cow, burned on her stomach and her eyes bloodshot, was in especially bad shape and had not moved since the previous day. Others lay about listlessly. A calf, still mobile, but bleeding and jumpy, would not let anyone get close.

The rancher who owned these animals had been notified, but a more active part of North Star was threatening his home 20 miles to the south. This was the situation I encountered day after day for many residents affected by North Star: homes being threatened or destroyed, livestock scattered and injured, crops and hay lost. Choosing between saving your home and caring for your animals — and, thus, livelihood — seemed an awful decision to have to make.

“Where did you eat last night?” Mackenzie asked me on our last morning together. We were headed to the Cornell Butte Lookout, which had reportedly been burned up by the fire.

“Freckles BBQ,” I said. “They gave us all souvenir magnets and massive portions.”

She shrugged. “It’s a logging and ranching town.”

The fire camp in Republic was what is known as a “spike camp.” The main camp was located in Omak, almost two hours away and on the fire’s western edge. With a megafire like North Star, spike camps are crucial, otherwise crews can be driving half the day just to reach their work areas. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t have all the amenities; for the moment, the Republic spike camp lacked showers, hand washing stations and an on-site caterer. Though hot food was being transported to the camp in boxes, a number of people had chosen to eat in town.

“It’s good for the businesses,” Mackenzie nodded approvingly when I mentioned the crowds at the restaurants.

A few hours later we found the lookout still standing. The slopes dropping away from it, however, had become blackened moonscapes. The structure had been spared largely because it was mostly metal, but I was still amazed, given the intensity of the fire in this area, that it wasn’t more damaged.

Within the North Star fire area, a lake system west of the Sanpoil River is home to common loons (Gavia immer), a state-listed sensitive species. Swan, Ferry and Long Lakes are three of only 18 sites in Washington where the birds are known to nest. The area is also a popular recreation area, with campgrounds, hiking trails and fishing. Yet, it was eerily deserted, by birds and people, one morning as I scanned the surface of Swan Lake with my binoculars. Informational signs leading to the lake had been encased in protective, aluminum wrap, while an outdoor kitchen, built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, was being watched over by a sprinkler system. Across the lake, the fire continued burning, though in an undramatic way with more smoke visible than flame. Still, trees crashing to the ground at regular intervals belied the calm.

A big fire like North Star will always have forest stands changed beyond recognition existing beside mosaic patterns of lightly burned and unburned ground. I am never surprised by the strange, unpredictable work of fire, and I also see the many benefits it brings in terms of ecosystem renewal. But, I know, too, that modern human society maintains a decidedly uneasy relationship with one of the main elements of life on the planet. We are living with fire, but we resist tremendously the power it wields. We are very uncomfortable with the uncertainty it creates, and there is no place in the social and economic systems we’ve built for the kinds of far-reaching losses that result from catastrophic mega-fires. As I left the lakes and continued with my day of mapping firelines, I knew I had to focus on my small role in the fire suppression effort, documenting what would be needed after North Star was fully out. If I didn’t and continued to think about the enormous challenges managing fire across landscapes that people and wildlife rely on in many different ways, there would once again be little sleep that night.

The morning I left Republic the temperature sat in the low 30s, and a light frost covered the late-summer grasses. The Sanpoil River Valley was thicker than usual with smoke, the result of controlled burns designed to help keep the uncontrolled areas in check. I met with my replacement, Dave, a Forest Service fisheries biologist from Alaska, who would serve as the next resource advisor with the assistance of Mackenzie. I felt sorry to leave, but also knew North Star would benefit from a fresh set of eyes. On the way out of town, I stopped at Java Joy’s.

“You’re a firefighter, right?” the young woman asked as she handed me my drink.

“Yes,” I said, “but I’ll pay today.”

After departing Republic, I traveled west on highway 20 to the small town of Tonasket before turning south on highway 97 toward Omak. A full two hours of driving 60 miles per hour passed before I finally stopped seeing parts of the North Star Fire.

Betsy L. Howell is a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service currently working in Olympic National Forest in Washington State.

The post The Fire’s Edge appeared first on American Forests.

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHUCK FAZIO

This past summer, friends and members of American Forests joined us for an exclusive adventure in Denali National Park. We were lucky enough for photographer Chuck Fazio, our Artist-in-Residence, to tag along! Fazio also explored several other Alaskan locales prior to the start of our trip, and along his entire adventure, he captured some of the most stunning shots of the beautiful Alaskan landscapes and wildlife. Now, follow Chuck’s journey and the stories he has to tell as you admire the craftsmanship of fine photography.

I decided to add a few days on the beginning of the trip American Forests took back in July to Denali in Alaska. My map said a trip starting in Fairbanks made a lot of sense, so I booked a ticket for a 4:30 p.m. arrival and off I went with not more of a plan than that. I like to find cool things to shoot at a destination rather than being influenced by how others have already captured it. I love the challenge, and then the reward, of having a “wow’er” — an image that causes a person to utter the word in joyful reaction to a picture.

I knew as soon as I saw this rainbow I had a sense that I might have my first “wow’er” for the trip. (above) It was a very cool to begin my time in Alaska with a big win.

The Parks Highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage is one of the most beautiful drives in North America. Case in point. I almost missed this wonderful scene because I was focused on technology instead of focusing first on the grandeur that was so obvious in front of me. I was distracted by a drone issue that caused me to turn away from the range. I was in a place with other people, so it was easy to hear the talk of the cool and somewhat rare sighting of the summit of Mt. Denali. I might have been distracted, but I was prepared to get it once I knew I wanted to shoot it. (left)

I got to Anchorage around 7:30 p.m., which pretty much added up to a 12-hour day driving through the Alaskan countryside. But, the thought of stopping made no sense. I could do a four-hour drive to the coastal town of Seward.

The Parks Highway is full of wildlife viewing opportunities. A couple cars parked on the side of the road is always a good indicator of something special to see — in this case a moose, which love to wade into a lake or pond and submerge their head to chomp down on grass growing on the bottom. (right)

I got to Seward around 11:30 p.m. and — who knew? — every hotel in the town was closed for the night. I knew the hazard when I left Anchorage, and I was prepared to sleep in the car… mostly because I knew if I had looked for a room and didn’t find one, I might not have made the trip. And, not making the trip down to Seward would have been a very bad thing. The one hotel not closed had one room left but “it didn’t have cable.” I felt bad about taking the discount offered because I thought “cable? Unless a UFO landed, there was nothing I wanted to see on cable.” Not only did the guy hook me up with a room, but he told me what boat tour to take the next morning and that, “oh by the way, there’s a really good shot right now, at 12:30 a.m.,” just down the scary gravel road next to the harbor, the deep cold harbor.

I thought “Hey, if someone says there’s a picture to take, damn the whole potential drowning thing. Let’s do this.” And, this is what I took at 12:20 a.m. that morning. (above left)The boat tour the next day turned out to be one of the greatest nine-hour stretches I could ever hope to have as a photographer. Our destination was the Northwestern Glacier, named after the eponymous university. The glacier is visible in the distance. It may have been a nine-hour tour, and it never got old with views like this! (below)

And now, the Eagle Series. This was all about putting yourself in a position to be lucky. After flying across the entirety of North America and again across Alaska, then taking a float plane further into Alaska, I walked a mile and a half through bear trails finally arriving at a place where some incredible wildlife lives — Brooks Camp. But, now what? At Brooks Camp, three main viewing platforms exist, but the one closest to the falls and, thus, the bears in the stream, was limited to only 40 people for hour-long viewing periods. And, you can wait hours to get out to the third viewing platform, but once you do, incredible sights are only a possibility. There are no guarantees and, in fact, it took two days to get the totality of my shots at Brooks. The first day, I saw an eagle perched on a tree across the river. I trained my 500mm lens on it and waited some 15 agonizing minutes before she flew. The challenge, and the luck, when that happened was keeping her in focus as she made a swoop around the river. Out of 23 shutter clicks, 22 were miraculously in focus and 10 of those images were absolutely stunning. (below)In addition to eagles, I got to see a number of bears out in the wild. A sow and her cubs were not affected by our presence. There seems to be an understanding among the species: The bears know humans are neither a threat nor a food source, and humans know to give bears their space. There are no fences along the trails so turning a corner and seeing this is no shock or surprise. Momma was still looking thin from hibernation and child rearing, but that’ll change soon as she starts to feed on the salmon making their way up stream. (right)Although I got plenty of great bear-eating-salmon shots my first day shooting at Brooks, I didn’t have the one shot I really wanted. No bears were at the top of the falls catching fish in mid-air — a shot I wanted badly. So, one of my best decisions of the trip was to plan for two days at Brooks. You don’t come all that way and not plan on a washout one of the days. That time of year in Alaska, the weather is very unpredictable. It would be easy to get days of pouring rain so to hedge my best, I flew back into the small town of King Salmon for the night with the intention of planning to go back to Brooks for another day’s worth of shooting.

It was a good call, as this sight greeted me as soon as I got back out to the third viewing platform the morning of day two. I was literally giddy when I saw this beautiful brown bear at the top of the falls trying to catch salmon. (below)

During the American Forests’ Forest Adventure portion of the trip while exploring Denali National Park, I was also able to capture some great shots, but this was a favorite! It is a singularly unique experience to view a sunset at midnight during the summer. It never gets totally dark during the months surrounding the solstice. This sunset was captured in Denali, taken around 12:30 a.m. (below)

Chuck Fazio is American Forests’ Artist-in-Residence.

The post Escape to Alaska appeared first on American Forests.

Mary Wagner, Associate Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, retired in June 2016, after 34 years. Yet, her appetite for the outdoor world started at a young age. Mary grew up in Southern California, one of four siblings whose working parents’ idea of a fun weekend was packing the kids into a “travel trailer” and taking them into the San Bernardino or San Jacinto Mountains for camping, hiking and sitting around a campfire.

After graduating high school, Mary was unsure of her career path. One day’s methodical perusal of the Career Center file cabinet at college led to kismet, when she pulled out the sheet of paper on forestry and thought instantly, “this is it.” For Mary, a science-oriented career outdoors hit all the right nerves.

She transferred to Humboldt State University to study forest management and got an opportunity through the state of California’s Young Adult Observation Corps program to work on a crew assigned for the summer to the San Bernardino National Forest headquarters. There, working under forest botanist and other forest staff officers, Mary loved standing in streams with nets for fish counts, conducting rare plant surveys and following lichen researchers studying the impact of air pollution on forests.

But most of all, she loved the people.

“It was the early-‘80s, an era when women were ground-breaking their way into fields like this,” says Mary. The people she worked with there became her mentors and coaches and left “an indelibly positive impression on me.”

Being recruited for the Forest Service’s Cooperative Education program led to her being selected for a Forest Service job. She survived her first experience as a firefighter at Payette National Forest in Idaho, where she learned to operate a chainsaw, among other things, before moving on to Sawtooth National Forest, where her training as a forester began in earnest.

“The mission of the Forest Service attracted me in its positions on the sustainable use of resources and to pass something along to future generations,” says Mary. “But, it was the people that kept me there. Early on, it struck me that conservation is about people — working together as a community to help determine what was going to happen in the woods.”

Mary became a forest supervisor in 1999, working in Dixie National Forest in southern Utah. There, collaboration took a different form: working with officials on a scenic byway plan for Highway 12 in Garfield County. But, the community was digging in its heels, very turned-off by the process they had witnessed with the federal designation of the nearby Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument. Locals felt the federal government had run rough-shod over the community, and there was a lack of trust in the scenic byway planning process.

The scenic byway designation had the potential to offer important long-term benefits to the community from the standpoint of future tourism dollars. Under Mary’s leadership, the Forest Service made overtures to the community, offering to bring resources to the table, including advisors who could provide perspective based on experience, while taking a back seat and letting the community lead the process.

“It created a remarkable partnership energy, and really brought home that there are different ways to approach things,” says Mary. Ultimately, the county earned Highway 12 an All-American Road status, a win-win for all concerned, and an important reminder that there are many ways to navigate what can seem like insurmountable obstacles.

“When there’s a common cause, people do tend to roll up their sleeves and work together,” says Mary.

After a couple of short details to the Intermountain Regional Office and Forest Service headquarters, Mary came to Washington, D.C. in 2003 as the Assistant Director of Recreation, Heritage and Wilderness and the first Director of Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers. A return to the field as Deputy Regional Forester for the Intermountain Region and Regional Forester for the Pacific Northwest Region proceeded Mary’s return to headquarters as Associate Chief in January 2011.

While claiming she has nothing to be proud of in her career “that is attributable to me, or at least, to me alone,” she does make note of the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, for its simplicity and clarity in addressing the agency’s role in sustaining our nation’s forests and grasslands, applying knowledge globally and delivering benefits to people. She also noted the agency’s work towards “a climate of inclusion, that awakens and strengthens people’s connection to the land,” by becoming aware of, and finding their way into, the diverse communities of outdoor people.

Mary feels privileged to have followed Hank Kashdan into the Associate Chief office, as he had followed Sally Collins into the position. Their management style and rhythm set a tone that Mary admired and wished to perpetuate. But, there were many others in the Forest Service for whom she has profound respect as well.

“The maraschino cherry on the top of my Forest Service career was working for Tom Tidwell,” says Mary. “I admire what he does and how he does it.

He is devoted to the mission of the agency and building on the efforts of previous Chief’s has continued to frame the most important issues for natural resources and people. He had set an agenda for restoring and maintaining resilient forests and grasslands, addressing the impacts of wildfire and climate and deepening and strengthening connection with people and communities. It was an absolute privilege to assist the agency in making progress on these priorities.”

In the near term, Mary and her husband are planning mountain hikes and river-rafting with friends and family with her newly gained free time. Further into the future, however, she sees herself involved in “some sort of advocacy — homelessness, food security, access to the outdoors — important issues in every community.”

Lea Sloan writes from Washington, D.C. and is American Forests’ vice president of communications.

The post The Making of a Leader in Forestry appeared first on American Forests.

By Scott Steen

Last year, as I rode with a group through a blizzard deep in the heart of Yellowstone National Park in an ancient Bombardier, we were completely surrounded by a herd of bison using the road to navigate the snowstorm. The day before, we had a “three dog day” — with multiple sightings of wolves, foxes and coyotes. The next evening, we drove out far into the black night to see a sky alive with countless stars and distant galaxies. And it occurred to me — as I am sure it has to millions of people before me — “Where else, except for a national park, would this be possible?”

I had a similar experience this summer during a rainy hike up a small mountain in Denali National Park. When we got to the top, the rain cleared briefly and dramatically, revealing endless miles of rolling tundra, without a sign of civilization in view.

As the year-long centennial celebration of the National Park Service winds down, I thought it appropriate to recognize what is, unquestionably, one of the most important achievements in our nation’s history and in the conservation movement. American Forests (then American Forestry Association) was founded just three years after Yellowstone became our first national park in 1872, and our history parallels, and has been shaped by, the creation of what historian Wallace Stegner called “our best idea.”

Our national parks are a roll call of superlatives. The tallest tree in the world, the Hyperion, is in Redwood National Park. The largest single stem tree in the world, the General Sherman, is in Sequoia National Park. The highest and lowest points in North America are in national parks (Denali and Death Valley, respectively). The longest cave system in the world is at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. The largest national park, Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska, is bigger than Switzerland. The deepest lake in the U.S. is Crater Lake, in Crater Lake National Park (at 1,932 feet deep, it is 156 feet deeper than One World Trade Center, America’s tallest building, is tall). The list of miracles contained in the parks goes on and on.

But, the real thing that makes these parks so special is the transformative effect they have on people. I asked American Forests team members about their experience with the parks, and their stories speak to the ability of nature to inspire us, to bring us together and to expand our worldviews.

Family was an important theme. For example, one of our team members talked about how a trip at age four to Great Smoky Mountains National Park became her first vivid memory, combining the beauty of the fall foliage with the sounds of forest streams and a feeling of deep peace and love from being with her family. Another recounted how a visit to Denali National Park with his mother after graduation changed the direction of his life, and how he later brought his own children there to experience the sense of awe that he had once felt. A third talked about how a week-long camping trip in Sequoia National Park transformed his relationship with his children, bringing the family closer together than ever before.

Another theme was how the parks provide one-of-a kind, life changing experiences. Our vice president of conservation programs recounts how he and companions trekked more than 20 miles into an area southeast of Yellowstone Lake that is reported to be the farthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 states. As they approached the campsite, they happened upon a herd of elk drinking from the lake in the late afternoon sun. That evening, they heard wolves howling — the delta pack — known to use the area but rarely seen. Magic.

Our most devoted park aficionado, who has visited more than 100 national parks, monuments and historic sites so far, said his most amazing experience came after spending a month at Katmai National Park watching the bears feast on the annual salmon run. From there, he was able to catch a ride with a bush pilot to visit Aniakchak National Monument, one of the wildest and least visited parks in the National Park System. During his time there, he was only one of 11 visitors in the vast 601,294-acre park.

There are 59 national parks and 82 national monuments, plus hundreds more national historic parks, national historic sites, national preserves, national seashores and other holdings in the National Park System. They are in every state and territory and encompass a huge array of passions and interests. If you have never taken advantage of these national treasures, I urge you to get out there and explore. They may just change your life.

The post Our Best Idea appeared first on American Forests.

DANIEL DEY is a Project Leader & Research Forester in the Northern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service. He manages a research unit that conducts research on forest management issues and problems in the Central Hardwood Region throughout the Midwest, southern Great Lakes and western mid-Atlantic region. Dey’s personal research focuses on evaluating silvicultural practices to restore and sustainably manage forests, woodlands and savannas. He has done extensive work with collaborators to determine historic fire regimes in oak-/pine-dominated ecosystems throughout eastern North America. Dey integrated this knowledge in developing methods of using prescribed fire to restore native forest communities, favor fire-dependent species, reduce fuels and fire risk, restore natural ecosystem processes and create high quality wildlife habitat.

What led you to want to work for the Forest Service?

I have always loved being outside, working outside, playing outside and studying nature. I did the usual hunting and fishing as a youth, and teamed up with friends who traded insects from their collections instead of baseball cards. I took all the science classes I could in high school, but was most fortunate to have three years of courses in conservation. That was important in fueling my desire to have a career in natural resources. Typically, I was naïve about career opportunities in natural resources, but I knew that I wanted to manage lands for multiple-use and not just commodity production. That pretty much meant I would be applying for state or federal jobs. I was a member of the late-‘60s and early-‘70s youth movement in environmentalism. I led the first Earth Day observance for my high school in Wisconsin, a state known for its leadership in conservation. I attended Trees for Tomorrow camp sponsored by the Isaac Walton League, read John Muir and lived to be outdoors. When I signed up for my undergraduate major, I had no idea what a forester was or did, but my advisor told me that foresters had better chances of getting jobs than other natural resource disciplines. That’s how and when I became a forester. I feel totally blessed in my work career to have worked in forests across the U.S. and Canada and with great people who love nature with a passion.

What was your favorite aspect of your job?

I like working with managers and land owners to help provide the knowledge and the methods in natural resource management that address the problems they face and deliver on the goals they aspire to achieve on their land.

What was the most difficult moment or encounter that you experienced in pursuit of your work?

I would say that the most difficult encounter or moment that I have had to face is myself, and how I responded to policies, practices, priorities and funding decisions at work that I didn’t agree with. In my youth, I was quick to disagree with management decisions that impacted what I wanted to get done, and I would become outraged at the stupidity. I was impatient to do what needed to be done. It has taken me too long to bridle my impatience, learn to work with people and find ways around barriers to action. I’m a “get it done” kind of guy and don’t enjoy the eternal planning process that often limits what we can and need to get done.

What do you think is the biggest issue facing national forests today?

Being able to actively manage the national forests to sustain, maintain and improve forest productivity, health, biodiversity, integrity and resilience in a timely manner and on the scale of operation that is needed.

Who is your favorite fictional scientist and why?

It would have to be Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future movies. He was extremely curious, inventive, thinking outside the box, solving problems and creating a few new ones, eccentric, positive, humorous and he ended up with the love of his life and a beautiful family.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be? Why?

I would be a forester who manages lands for public agencies, private landowners or conservation organizations. I love learning about nature, working with natural communities and figuring out how to manage them to produce what people need in a way that is sustainable and improves future health, productivity and resilience of the natural community. It is an exciting challenge to me to integrate diverse landowner or public desires for their forests, orchestrating the diverse ecology of the host of species competing within the community, dealing with invasive species and planning for changes in disturbance regimes such as weather, fire and endemic insect and disease outbreaks.

Where is your favorite spot to experience nature and why?

My favorite nature place is wherever I am outdoors, and the more natural the setting the better. It is ironic that early in my forestry career you would find me out in the forest on most days, tramping through the forests, up and down the mountains, forging creeks and rivers. But, sadly, now I am sitting at my desk working on my computer most days. My current job life just makes me appreciate being outdoors no matter where I am. I have learned to appreciate nature where ever I’m at, even if it is watching a colony of ants crawling up between cracks in the concrete sidewalk on my lunch break.

What is the most surprising thing that you have learned or discovered?

When I was going through my forestry education in the 1970s-‘90s, I was taught about the destructive effects that fire has on forests. So much of the early history of the U.S. Forest Service and state forestry departments was to control woods burning and wildfires; in fact, they were often created to stop the theft of timber, open range grazing and destructive loss of timber by wildfires. Later, we began linking the problems with getting successful or sufficient oak regeneration to the absence of fire. And, from the 1980s to the present, we have become aware of the loss of oak/ pine savannas and woodlands that once were prominent on the landscapes in many regions of the East. How with their loss following regional logging booms of the late-19th to early-20th centuries and fire suppression, that our landscapes lost much diversity in age, structure, composition, natural communities and habitat; that they had become more vulnerable to catastrophic forest mortality with droughts and outbreaks of insects and diseases due to the homogeneity of their condition. Now, I have come full circle as I spend much time learning how to combine prescribed fire with harvesting and thinning of the overstory to promote competitive oak regeneration, and to promote restoration of high-quality ground vegetation communities for savannas and woodlands, while minimizing the adverse impacts that fire can have on timber. Working with forest managers that have wide ranging attitudes about the role of fire in management and restoration makes for great debates and exciting times.

Do you have a favorite story from your years in the field?

There was a time following the Great Flood of 1993 along the lower Missouri and Mississippi Rivers that I got involved in restoring bottomland forests, with an emphasis on ensuring oaks would be present in the future forests that were developing on damaged and abandoned agricultural floodplain fields. One aspect of the approach to afforestation that I was testing was to plant large (more than 5’ tall) container oak seedlings for the perceived advantages they would have in escaping deer browsing and growing season floods. I established my first study in the fall of 1999. And, things looked great that fall and early winter but then we began observing that cottontail rabbits were girdling the seedlings at the base of the tree. The damage by rabbits was extensive in the fields where trees were growing with plants that naturally invaded abandoned crop fields, and less in fields we planted with a short grass cover crop. Well, that next summer we found that most of the damaged seedlings did resprout, only now the sprouts were short enough that deer could easily browse the succulent foliage. I had anticipated that deer browsing could be a problem and, therefore, included these large seedlings in the study. What I never anticipated was the conspiracy between very different wildlife species to aid and abet each other in their fight for survival.

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