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WAG Tales Newsletter of the Chief’s Wilderness Advisory Group Volume 5, Issue 1
Summer, 2012
A Letter on Youth in Wilderness By Leanne Marten, Director of Wilderness and Wild & Scenic Rivers I am honored to have this opportunity to participate in this version of the WAG Tales. For those of you that I have not had the pleasure to meet or visit with via telephone or VTC, I am Leanne Marten, Director of Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers out of Washington DC. I have had the honor of being in this position since August 2011. Prior to coming to DC, I spent the first 20-plus years of my career in the field working in jobs ranging from a seasonal employee doing silviculture data plots to being a forester /planner and eventually to becoming a District Ranger and Forest Supervisor on two different forests. My family and I have lived in some of the most beautiful parts of the country and have enjoyed our time enjoying the outdoors and hiking in many of our wilderness areas. This includes wilderness areas out West as well as in the Midwest and Northeast. One of the many things that I love about working for the Forest Service is that regardless of where we have lived and worked, we have always met tremendously passionate people who love the outdoors and care about the management of natural resources so future generations may have the same opportunities to enjoy and connect with nature that exist today. I was very excited to learn and read about WAG’s efforts on Wild Child: Engaging Youth in Wilderness. As you are aware, the Forest Service has a rich legacy of youth employment and service programs, starting back with the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s. The importance of engaging youth in nature and enabling those connections has always been an importance part of the Forest Service. More recently, through the America Great Outdoors listening (see Letter, continued on pg. 6)
WAG Meets with Chief Tidwell WAG Chair Ryan Brown met with Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell on April 11th in Washington DC. "It was clear to me that Chief Tidwell cares deeply about wilderness. His high level of knowledge and sincere interest in the future of wilderness, the needs of wilderness staff, and our success on the 10-Year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge assured me that we are in good hands." The Chief was presented with accomplishments from 2011, many of which were attributed to the national funds granted out to regions and forests to work on a variety of 10YWSC projects. Also on the agenda was a discussion of what would come after the 10YWSC. "The Chief appeared pleased with our progress on the 10YWSC, and also recognized the long road ahead and the effort it would take to meet our goals," says Brown. "Overall, the Chief was supportive of WAG's approach and reaffirmed his intent to meet the Challenge by 2014." WAG sends out a big thank you to Chief Tidwell for his support of the wilderness program!
What Comes After the 10-Year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge? Read the article on pg. 5 and share your opinion by completing the online survey! WAG Tales 1
Wilderness Stewardship Success Story Craig High School Students Study Wilderness on the Tongass National Forest On the Tongass National Forest Tory Houser, Recreation Planner for the Craig Ranger District visits Craig High School once a month to discuss wilderness. It’s a great place to teach young people about wilderness because for most of these students, wilderness is their backyard. It’s what their houses look out at across San Alberta Bay. th
Craig High School teachers Ashley Hutton and Todd Bass help students collect lichen specimens for a biodiversity study. Photo courtesy of Tory Houser.
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Craig High School offers 10 -12 graders an Alaska Naturalist and Marine Biology class in alternating years. During the 2008-2009 school year Tory and the Alaska Naturalist class teacher, Cheryl Fecko, developed a curriculum that looked at wilderness concepts on a national scale and how they relate to the five local designated wilderness areas: Coronation Island, Karta River, Maurelle Islands, South Prince of Wales and Warren Island. The class was then introduced to the idea of wilderness on a field trip to the Twentymile Spur Trail adjacent to the Karta River Wilderness.
One of the partnership goals between the school and the Forest Service was to make the concepts being taught real and pertinent. For this reason, Tory has organized activities with the students that could be used on a larger scale than the class alone. Tory takes the Alaska Naturalist class to the Karta River Wilderness where they monitor invasive species, examine lichen study plots for air quality monitoring, inventory campsite use and monitor social encounters. There are also sessions covering archaeology, Leave No Trace, and traditional skills such as trail maintenance and crosscut saw use. Tory takes the Marine Biology class on a boat to the Maurelle Islands Wilderness where, on shore, students monitor visitor encounters to gauge solitude, inventory campsites, and discuss outfitter-guide use and the stipulations needed to ensure that such use does not compromise wilderness character. At sea, the students measure water quality and drop crab pots to monitor for invasive green crabs. While this program is an excellent example of how the Forest Service can partner with local schools to engage youth in wilderness, it is not without challenges. The Alaska Naturalist and Marine Biology classes are electives, and only a small percentage of students choose to enroll. In addition, students must maintain a certain grade point average to go on the field trips and one year the wilderness field trip had to be cancelled due to too few students with good grades. Tory has also noted that while the students enjoy being at sea they do not necessarily appreciate the connection between island and marine ecology and wilderness stewardship. Challenges aside, the wilderness education program is growing. Craig Elementary and Middle schools are now interested in participating in wilderness stewardship activities. As a starting point for these programs, during the 2012 school year a group of teachers attended a Wilderness Investigations training lead by Carhart Center Educational Specialist Steve Archibald. Tory hopes to follow up with an appropriately scaled program for conducting similar wilderness character monitoring with the elementary and middle school students. Tory Houser, Eric Scheidecker, and Shahan Stickwan head out on the wilderness monitoring field trip. Photo courtesy of Tory Houser.
To learn more about Tory’s program contact her at
[email protected].
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Snapshot: Emigrant Wilderness Location: Stanislaus National Forest, Region Five Designated: 1975 Size: 112,277 acres The Emigrant Wilderness is located on the western slope of the central Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and is contiguous with the Yosemite Wilderness to the south, the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness to the north, and the Hoover Wilderness to the east. It is a glaciated landscape of great scenic beauty featuring broad expanses of granite peaks and domes, lava-capped peaks, alpine lakes, mountain The Emigrant Wilderness. Photo courtesy of Art Sowls streams, and deep canyons. This wilderness includes 200 miles of designated trails with elevations ranging from 5000 feet near Cherry Reservoir to 11,570 feet at Leavitt Peak. An average of fifty inches of precipitation falls annually – eighty percent in the form of snow. Various native peoples occupied this area over the past 10,000 years spending the summer and early autumn hunting in the high country and trading with groups from the eastern side of the Sierra. Following the discovery of gold in 1848, large numbers of miners and settlers came to the Sierra Nevada and the native cultures quickly declined. In September-October of 1852, the Clark-Skidmore party became the first emigrant group to travel the West Walker route over Emigrant Pass, continuing through a portion of the present-day Emigrant Wilderness. Several more emigrant parties were enticed by officials from Sonora, California to cross the mountains using this route in 1853 but it was a very difficult passage and was abandoned. In 1931, the U.S. Forest Service designated the Emigrant Basin Primitive Area; on January 4, 1975, the Emigrant Basin Primitive Area was designated by Congress as wilderness. More recently, the Stanislaus National Forest and WildLink have used the Emigrant Wilderness as an outdoor classroom where high-school students learn about environmental stewardship and the value of wilderness. WildLink is a unique partnership of Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks, NatureBridge, Sequoia Natural History Association and the National Forests of the Sierra Nevada. It was born from an interagency position that was chartered to develop new approaches to wilderness education that would reach underserved communities located near the Sierra Nevada wilderness areas and is now operated independently with support from the WildLink crew with rangers Evan Topal and Adam Barnett at Chewing federal agencies. Through a series of free Gum Lake in the Emigrant Wilderness, California. Photo Courtesy of programs, both at home and in the wilderness, Laura Beardsley. WildLink seeks to inspire youth to become longterm environmental stewards with strong connections to the natural world. WildLink uses a variety of programs to reach culturally diverse high school students, their peers, and families. Presentations, wilderness experiences, and stewardship projects are utilized to increase awareness and create a community that values wilderness and is involved in its protection. As students’ progress through the program they can become Wilderness Ambassadors where they actively share their experiences and perspectives with their local communities, often organizing field trips to wild areas or service projects close to home. WildLink students together with Stanislaus National Forest Wilderness Rangers have completed a variety of campsite restoration and monitoring projects in the Emigrant Wilderness and campsite restoration at high-use destinations will be the focus of project work in 2012. For more information about WildLink, contact Laura Beardsley, Executive Director at 209-379-1993 or Adam Barnett with the Stanislaus National Forest. WAG Tales 3
Wild Child: Engaging Youth in Wilderness There is a growing call nationally to re-engage young Americans with the natural environment. As a result, there are an increasing number of programs that encourage land managers and educators to connect youth and nature. Wilderness managers have long known that education is the primary tool for fostering desirable behaviors and habits in wilderness visitors; this topic is also ripe for endeavor because in this time of tight budgets there are still numerous opportunities for motivated and creative wilderness managers to find funding for programs that engage youth For example, one of the Forest Service’s biggest efforts is distributing $1 million dollars to projects that get kids outdoors through the More Kids in the Woods and Children’s Forest programs. A list of projects that received 2012 funding is available online and this program will continue in FY 2013. These Forest Service grant programs align with the Obama Administration’s broader scale America’s Great Outdoors initiative in their focus on engaging the public to work to conserve and restore public lands. America’s Great Outdoors leverages federal dollars with contributions from corporations, foundations and other non-federal sources to provide financial support for new conservation job Crossing the creek near the Holy Cross training programs. It also Wilderness boundary, Colorado. Photo aims to address the need courtesy of Steve Sunday. to put urban and minority youth back in touch with the natural world. More Kids in the Woods, Children’s Forest and America’s Great Outdoors are but three examples of the funding opportunities available for educators and managers seeking to connect youth with wilderness.
Exploring the Spirit Mountain Wilderness, Nevada. Photo courtesy of Sandee Dingman.
Over the last few months the WAG Wild Child task team has been collecting information from the wilderness community on programs that engage youth in wilderness. The final report will include success stories that might inspire other efforts; challenges faced by wilderness educators; a lengthy list of potential funding sources; and recommendations about how the Forest Service can assist wilderness managers with implementing youth-oriented programs. Upon completion, the full report will be available through links in a future edition of the WAG Tales and will be posted on WAG’s website.
An Improved Approach to Field Uniform Outerwear WAG has proposed for inclusion in the uniform catalog a light-weight, compressible, waterproof rain jacket, rain pants, and a light-weight, compressible, insulated jacket for field-going personnel designed to be easily packable, wearable with a backpack and accommodate other insulating layers. These components would be alternatives to the “Unisex Rain/Wind Shell and Pant”, “Three Season Jacket”, “Fleece Top”, and “Unisex Parka & Hood” found in the current uniform catalog. A three-member panel developed a written proposal entitled “Safe, Warm and Dry—An Improved Approach to Field Uniform Outerwear” for the purpose of internal distribution to make the case for the new uniform items within the agency. This report was presented at the 2012 Wilderness Regional Program Managers meeting and has been shared with the Washington Office staff for their consideration. A project proposal for testing of commercially available uniform items has also been submitted to the Missoula Technology Development Center (MTDC) and WAG is currently awaiting the results. WAG Tales 4
What Comes After the 10-Year Challenge? The 10-Year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge comes to an official end on September 30, 2014 and the logical question is: What comes next? A sub-team of the Wilderness Advisory Group, in consultation with Regional Wilderness Program Managers and the Wilderness Information Management Steering Team, has been tackling that question over the past few months. While the performance measure “wildernesses managed to a minimum stewardship level” remains in place indefinitely, the end of the Challenge provides an opportunity to evaluate our current course regarding how performance of the wilderness program is evaluated and make any needed modifications. Recognizing that the ultimate goal in wilderness is to preserve wilderness character, there is substantial interest in creating performance elements which measure the overall wilderness character of an area rather than the stewardship actions that protect character. There is also interest in allowing for more flexibility in choosing performance elements in order to better reflect the differing management issues from region to region. Finally, there is interest in changing some of the elements to improve counting instructions or to replace some of the elements entirely. However, there is a substantial constituency that is opposed to each of these types of change. Despite these disparate opinions, decisions must be made about what comes after the 10YWSC. To facilitate the discussion, WAG has identified three options regarding performance measures for the wilderness program after the Challenge ends. The next step is to solicit input from a wide range of employees interested in the future direction of the wilderness program. To accomplish this, WAG has created a brief online survey which we hope you will take a few minutes to complete: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PWJC9FL. WAG will compile the results of the survey and prepare to facilitate more discussions on this topic after the 2012 field season.
Career Ladder: In Search of the Missing Rungs At present, there are wide-spread issues within the Forest Service regarding difficulties wilderness employees face when attempting to move from entry level positions into those with increased administrative and management roles. For aspiring wilderness stewards engaged in career planning there is currently no roadmap to guide them from the field to leadership in wilderness management. The Career Ladder sub-team found that there are a great number of A young hiker in the Weminuche Wilderness, employees who feel trapped in the entry-level 0462 technician series Colorado. Photo courtesy of Sandee Dingman. because they are unable to break into the professional 0401 series positions that represent the next logical step in their career. There is widespread frustration that work experience in a 0462 position does not count towards qualifying someone for their supervisor’s job. Other significant problems include inconsistent interpretations of work experience by human resources personnel and a propensity for functionally relevant coursework to be deemed not adequate for meeting 0401 series education requirements. Dissatisfaction with the qualification process and limited options for advancement has had direct impacts on employee morale and retention that are just starting to be realized. A full report, which includes a series of detailed recommendations for agency leadership, is in development by the sub-team and is out for review by all WAG members. The completed report then will be made widely available to the greater Forest Service wilderness community via links in a future edition of the WAG Tales newsletter and on WAG’s website. The intention of the report is to raise awareness of the issue at all levels of the agency and to stimulate leadership at the WO level to identify the recommended actions as priorities to be addressed. WAG Tales 5
(Letter, continued from pg. 1)
sessions, this importance was re-emphasized through thousands of comments received from the public expressing interest in protecting America’s natural and cultural resources and the desire to have more career-building experiences offered on our public lands. Recommendations to the President from these listening sessions included finding additional ways to provide meaningful work, service, and learning opportunities to young people. There are many efforts underway nationally to renew our emphasis on expanding service and employment opportunities for young people. For instance, the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Army and Council on st Environmental Quality are in the process of creating a 21 Century Conservation Service Corps for youth. The long term goal is to build on existing programs and partnerships to interest and employ more Kerry and Shannon Muenchow hike in the Lost Creek young people in natural and cultural resource work. More specific Wilderness, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Kurt to the Agency and wilderness program, we have continued to Muenchow. emphasize work associated with meeting the 10-Year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge and the opportunities available to reach out and engage youth in that important work. Many of you are doing just that; connecting youth to the land. There are so many different ways this is already occurring by each of you. These include, but are not limited to such things as you individually taking time to spend with kids outdoors, participation in school programs and entering into partnership and agreements with outside organizations to connect kids with wilderness. This takes time, effort, and passion and is vital to everything we do. As challenging as it is, due to all the other demands on your time, I encourage you to hang in there and keep doing what you can, where you can, while still taking time for yourself and family. Each day I have the honor of seeing, from a national perspective, all the wonderful work being accomplished out there on the ground. The efforts of WAG to share those success stories and ideas will hopefully help each of you have an opportunity to share in that picture. I sincerely applaud your work and efforts and encourage you to continue. Be creative, start with the notion that it can be done and then reach out and seek others to help make it happen. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a smile on a child’s face and the spark of love for the outdoors begin to shine and grow brighter and brighter! I look forward to working with you in the future in my role as Director. My offer to assist however I can continues to be extended. Thank you. Leanne
Get to Know Your Local WAG Representative
Back Row (left to right): Joshua Simpson, Kevin Hood, Sam Massman, Eric Flood, Steve Boutcher, David Finnan, Wendi Urie Front row (left to right): Justin Preisendorfer, Adam Barnett, Ryan Brown
Region 1: Wendi Urie (Yellowstone RD, Gallatin NF) Region 2: Sam Massman (Eagle/Holy Cross RD, White River NF) Region 3: Eric Flood (Alpine RD, Apache-Sitgreaves NF) Region 4: Joshua Simpson (Ely RD, Humboldt-Toiyabe NF) Region 5: Adam Barnett (Stanislaus NF) Region 6: Ryan N. Brown (Gifford Pinchot NF) (Chair) Region 8: David Finnan (Pisgah RD, Pisgah NF) Region 9: Justin Preisendorfer (Pemigewasset RD, White Mountain NF) (Vice Chair) Region 10: Kevin Hood (Juneau RD, Tongass NF) Washington Office: Steve Boutcher Regional Director Liaison: Vacant Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center: Ken Straley Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute: David Cole
WAG Tales 6
Miles to Go Photos and story courtesy of Ted Porwoll
For the last 5 years, my kids, Miles and Robin and their mother Karen have joined me on at least one of my annual lake sampling trips. I have been working as an Air Quality Technician on the Bridger-Teton NF for the last 15+ years and have made hundreds of trips into the Bridger Wilderness to collect precipitation and surface water samples. On Miles’ first sample trip, on his second birthday, we were visited by some early winter weather. While I left Miles and his mother Karen at the outlet of Black Joe Lake, to collect a sample at the inlet, it began to snow. I was away for a couple hours and when I got back they were hunkered under a White bark Pine trying to stay warm near a small fire that Karen had built. Miles was only two and had to be carried in a backpack the 2 miles back to camp. We rehabbed the fire and headed on back to camp. Miles rode quietly on the way back even though he had no gloves on and his hands were freezing. When we got back to camp I built a fire and we tried to get him warmed up. As his hands warmed the pain increased, if you have ever had frost nipped fingers or toes you will know what I’m talking about. The next day we woke to about 10” of new snow. Miles and Karen were going to stay near camp while I hiked the 6 miles to sample another lake. They accompanied me to the trail from our camp. When we got to the trail and I turned to head up the mountain, Miles pointed towards the trailhead and said “I want to go that way, back to the truck”. Needless to say, Karen and I were very impressed by his new found sense of direction and obvious common sense. He was already learning his way in the mountains. Until that trip we had struggled with trying to get him to give up his pacifier, he would have no part of it. On that trip down from the lake the first day he had dropped it, probably because his little hands were freezing. We never heard about the pacifier again. He had left it in the same place I have always left things that I thought were holding me back, on the trail into the backcountry. My family has joined me on lots of trips since then and we have always had a great time. The kids are very at home in the mountains and I am grateful that I have been given the chance to take them there and enjoy it with them.
The Chief’s Wilderness Advisory Group (WAG) was established in 1989 for the purpose of providing advice and counsel to the Chief of the Forest Service, from the perspective of field level managers, on matters related to wilderness stewardship. WAG consists of one field-based manager from each Region as well as representatives from the regional recreation directors, the Washington Office, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. WAG would like to thank Wendi Urie and David Cole for their years of outstanding work and commitment. We’ll miss you! WAG Tales 7
