The old tent creaks and buckles under the force of the fierce wind blowing from the west as I sleep. The tall windows of the nearby fire lookout tower rattle and shake. The sun sets behind a distant peak, clouds roll in and the clear blue sky slowly turns to the burnt orange of dusk. It took the better part of a day’s travel to get to the top of this mountain.

The journey began at a small town on a gravel road. With only a general store, a handful of houses, a seasonal restaurant and a hostel, it is really more like an outpost than a town. Where the twisted gravel road stopped, a footpath began. The narrow path moved through a moss-encrusted forest riddled with downed trees and followed the drainage of a cold, clear alpine creek. Near the top, the trees separated on the ridge to reveal an expansive view of a long valley. Just beyond this spot was my destination, a tiny shack balanced on the brow of a mountain. This is the place where Leif Haugen has spent the past several summers. I’ve come to talk with Haugen and get a first-hand peek behind the often-romanticized veneer of what it means to be a fire lookout.

Haugen is a fire lookout with the U.S. Forest Service. During the summer months, his job is to maintain watch over the pristine wilderness that surrounds his remote post a few miles south of the Canadian border in northwest Montana. He’s from Minnesota and learned about the lookout life through literature, securing his first job as a lookout with the help of a friend in 1994. He’s been returning ever since. “It’s a great way to spend the summer,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of choices, but all of the choices are things I enjoy doing: walking, reading, writing, carpentry and taking a good long look around.”

Haugen’s days on the mountain are usually a mix of routine, yet solitary, tasks that include maintaining the lookout, checking in on the radio (twice daily), reporting weather conditions, greeting the occasional visitor and, most importantly, scanning the landscape for signs of fire. In the event of fire, the simple routine is derailed, and he finds himself riveted to a map, radio, binoculars and the incredibly accurate Osborne Fire Finder — a primitive tool that helps him provide critical, up-to-the- minute coordinates and routes of safe passage — for 16 hours a day, supporting those fighting the blaze.

Haugen has spotted numerous fires, several of which were quite large, but none of which was more impressive than the Wedge Canyon Fire of 2003. “The fire conditions that year were unlike anything I’d ever seen,” says Haugen. There had been 10 or 15 fires in the area when he saw smoke behind Hornet Peak and immediately began mapping and gathering coordinates. Within three or four minutes, the fire grew so significantly that he quit mapping and radioed dispatch with a report of a highly active fire. He’d “never seen a fire that looked so benign grow so quickly.” Ten minutes after initial detection, he radioed dispatch again, this time simply saying, “You might want to get someone in the air for this one.” The Wedge Canyon Fire burned from July through September, destroying 29 buildings and seven residences while consuming more than 53,000 acres of land.

In the winter months, when Haugen works as a carpenter and builder, he often donates his spare time to rebuilding his lookout in a “way that suits its historic nature.” Using old drawings and photographs, he’s slowly been rebuilding the lookout piece by piece. It has a steeply pitched roof, wooden shingles and a stovepipe and is one of only four of its kind — known as the L4 design — remaining. In the few days prior to my arrival, he used an external frame backpack to carry a new screen door and large, heavy wooden cabinet for the station.

Fire lookouts have been in existence since 1870 when a watchtower was constructed in Helena, Mont. In 1879, the Southern Pacific Railroad posted a watchman over a field of trees in northern California. Following the massive fires of 1910, fire detection became a priority with the Forest Service, and the lookout program peaked in the 1930s when the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed more than 5,000 towers across the country. Frequently built in remote and inaccessible locations, the materials necessary for construction were often carried on the backs of men or mules. Since the 1970s, many lookout jobs have been eliminated because of advances in satellite and imaging technology. Today, only about 250 actively staffed lookouts remain and exist mostly in remote or highly sensitive areas.

Haugen is one of many who are maintaining the fire lookout tradition into the 21st century. Some come for just one season, but others return year after year and structure their lives around their time in the wilderness. No one chooses to be a lookout for money. Instead, they reap the intangible rewards of a life lived simply and directly, in rhythm with the time of nature, receiving bonuses that cannot be measured by conventional means while protecting some of our last wild places.

In the first light of dawn, I unzip the tent and immediately feel a cold, sharp wind. I peek out to see the sun rising over the mountains. It illuminates the soft bed of clouds that fill the valley and makes silhouettes of the eastern peaks. And I see why Haugen comes back year after year.

Tom Persinger is a photographer and writer based in Pittsburgh, Pa. Read more at www.tompersinger.com.

The post Leif Haugen, Fire Lookout appeared first on American Forests.

By Roisin Reid

Canada’s boreal forest is one of the last great wildernesses, making up a quarter of the original intact, unlogged forest that remains on Earth. This vast expanse is home to about 20 tree species, predominantly white and black spruce, jack pine, tamarack and balsam fir. It provides a home to a wide array of wildlife, including nearly 200 bird species. It is also home to the boreal woodland caribou, an endangered species under Canada’s Species at Risk Act.

The boreal is also the source of about half of Canada’s annual timber harvest, and many of the communities in the area rely heavily on forestry industry jobs.

“Forestry is the lifeblood of many rural communities across Canada,” says Mark Hubert, vice president of environmental leadership for the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC). “These communities need certainty that they will be able to continue to feed the mills that support them, but at the same time, they appreciate the inherent value of nature and recognize that we need to protect species at risk and wild spaces.”

More than 90 percent of the Canadian boreal is publicly owned, but the federal and provincial governments have zoned about a third of the total for industry. Much of this area is set aside for forestry through public forest management tenures, which are long-term licenses to forestry companies designed to encourage sustainable practices, such as replanting harvested areas.

Despite these efforts to manage Canada’s boreal forest responsibly, nearly 50 percent of the boreal woodland caribou’s range has been lost to human activities that fragment or disturb their habitat — activities like forestry, oil and gas exploration and road building. Meanwhile, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have come under fire for dragging their feet on recovery plans for the species. But a group of forestry companies and environmental organizations has come up with an innovative solution: the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA).

COMPROMISE IN ACTION

“This agreement necessitates a different way of thinking for the signatories,” says Hubert. “Rather than working as individual companies and organizations, the CBFA has mandated us to think holistically about conservation and economic outcomes.”

The agreement entails a commitment by the environmental groups to stop organizing boycotts of the signatory companies, while the companies have committed to suspending logging operations on nearly 72 million acres of boreal forest representing virtually all boreal woodland caribou habitat within company tenures.

The suspension of forestry activities gives the signatories a window to work together on a number of initiatives, including producing ecosystem-based management guidelines that participating companies can use to improve their practices and developing action plans for the recovery of caribou in specific areas. Once negotiated, these plans are given to the provincial governments to be incorporated into formal forestry management plans.

“The agreement is a solution to a problem we’ve had for a while — caribou are endangered — and now, the provinces have to do caribou action plans for the ranges,” says Janet Sumner, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Wildlands League. “Some of the forestry companies wanted to get out ahead of regulations they knew were coming, rather than waiting to be told what they had to do.”

The CBFA , signed in May 2010 by FPAC and its 21 member companies and by nine leading Canadian environmental organizations, including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and ForestEthics, now applies to more than 187 million acres of public forests licensed to FPAC member companies across Canada.

The agreement recognizes that although the responsibility for the future of forestry and conservation in Canada’s boreal forest rests primarily with governments, both industry and environmentalists have a responsibility to help define that future. The CBFA gives both parties a way to work towards a stronger, more competitive forestry industry and a better-protected, more sustainably managed boreal forest.

The process seems simple at first glance: The environmental groups, working with some of the best scientists in the country, identify caribou ranges as “areas of interest.” Then, bilateral agreements are worked out with the forestry companies to improve management in those areas. In practice, the process involves multiple stakeholders, including aboriginal groups, local communities and the provincial governments.

“Stakeholders don’t necessarily have to sign onto the plan, but including them in the process is a smarter way to do it,” says Sumner. “For example, in Alberta, where forestry is not the largest footprint on the landscape, we know we have to talk to oil and gas companies, the energy sector. Then, once the bilateral agreements are completed, we have to sell the package, which means working with local mayors, getting on the radio, doing presentations for the provincial government on how implementation might work — whatever it takes.”

ONTARIO’S EXAMPLE

The initial agreement in 2010 set out a three-year road map for progress under the CBFA . Progress has not always been easy, and the détente between the traditional rivals in the conservation and industry camps can be fragile; in December 2012, Greenpeace Canada pulled out of the agreement, in part because it says that progress on concrete objectives has been too slow.

But while the timeline has slipped, important progress is being made. In June 2012, the signatories announced a major breakthrough: The province of Ontario supported the signatories’ joint recommendations on an action plan for around 1,200 square miles of the province’s boreal forest — an area almost five times the size of metro Toronto.

The action plan recommendations aim to conserve critical parts of the more than seven million acres of caribou range in northeastern Ontario’s Abitibi River Forest, as well as to maintain hundreds of jobs in forestry. The recommendations would exclude around two million acres of critical caribou habitat from harvest. The remaining 5.4 million acres would remain open to forestry, with high standards of sustainable forestry practices — such as protecting mature conifer and caribou corridors — put in place to safeguard wildlife and ecosystems.

This solution is win-win-win for conservationists, the forestry industry and the communities that rely on the jobs it provides. It will conserve forested areas that are critical caribou habitat, but also allow for increased harvesting in areas where caribou have not been present for some time; in fact, it will provide an estimated 20 percent increase in wood supply over the next 30 years. Now that the provincial government has supported the plan, the CBFA signatories are eagerly anticipating implementation.

Ontario’s support shows that the CBFA strategy is working: Industry and environmentalists can collaborate closely and make governments take notice.

“It’s not enough to write something and have it sit on a shelf,” says Sumner. “It’s a strange situation that companies and go out together to try to sell the package, but it’s happening. Because we were able to sit down and get to know each other’s issues well. We understand: ‘I don’t get my caribou recovery plan unless you get the economic viability you’re looking for’ — and vice versa.”

With the northeast Ontario plan finalized, the CBFA signatories are working hard to expand progress in other areas of the country for the benefit of the caribou and the Canadian forestry industry.

“From the industry perspective, we’re getting market recognition for what we’re doing — we want to be globally recognized as providers of sustainable forest products,” says Hubert. “This is the most comprehensive agreement of its kind in the world. It’s complex and progress has sometimes been slower than we had hoped, but we’re all pushing to keep the ball rolling and we’re thrilled with what we’ve accomplished.”

Based in Ottawa, Canada, RoisinReid is a freelance writer focusing on environmental issues.

The post Unlikely Allies appeared first on American Forests.

By Dr. Mark Neuzil

In the 1980s, two Midwestern men who were fishing buddies, neighbors and more than moderately skilled in the industrial arts came across a rare old sumac blown down on a fencerow. Unlike most sumac in rural Iowa, this one had escaped a young death, nestled as it was along the barbed wire, out of the way of the mower and the plow. Free from the shade of larger trees, it grew to an unusual height, showing at least 25 growth rings when a strong wind finally ended its life. What the two friends did with the tree was nearly as unusual as its advanced age: Much of it ended up as a mantle in the local funeral chapel, where it sits over the fireplace with a natural olive-green-yellow glow, surprising mourners and giving them something to talk about at a time when conversation can be difficult.

The tree that Jack Neuzil, my father, and his buddy, Don Ochs, made use of was a staghorn sumac, the fruit — called drupes — of which were a source of a lemon-tasting drink for many Native Americans. Staghorn sumac (sometimes called stag’s horn, vinegar, Virginia or velvet sumac) is so named for two reasons, both related to male deer. The branches and pinnate leaves of the staghorn grow in an upright, spreading manner, resembling the antlers of an adult deer; its shoots are covered with a fine, white hair that looks like the velvet skin on a stag’s antlers.

But it was the 35- to 40-foot height of the tree, the relatively straight trunk and the strange, fluorescent quality of its wood that drew my father and Don to it. Along their journey with what became known as the mantle sumac came subtle lessons about the value of a tree often ignored if not downright scorned as a trash species or, worse, a weed.

SUMAC THROUGH THE AGES

Sumac, with about 250 species across the world, has been used throughout history for everything from medicines to a dinner garnish, an ingredient in wax, a tobacco additive and a dye. Various members of the sumac family (Anacardiaceae) can be found in North America, southern Africa, eastern Asia and northeastern Australia in a variety of forms, including deciduous or evergreen, shrubs, trees or woody climbers, in temperate or subtropical climates. In North America, sumacs are common in roadside ditches, known for their brilliant red or orange leaves in the fall.

Sumacs in their ubiquity have been described, catalogued and commented on since olden times. Naturalist Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century, noted the use of the juice of the fruit of the “sumach-tree of Syria” by curriers in the making of leather. Pliny compared the appearance of the seed to that of a lentil and wrote that it “forms a necessary ingredient in various medicaments.” The ancients mistakenly believed it to be a relief for fever, but they were accurate about its ability to help preserve animal skins. The Japanese, in their famous and oft-imitated black lacquers, were said to use its sap. In China, the Chinese characters for sumac literally mean “paint tree.” An 11th-century shipwreck, discovered centuries later off the coast of Rhodes, Greece, was filled with containers of sumac drupes that were being shipped to market.

Native American use varied by tribe. The Abenaki mixed its leaves and berries with tobacco for smoking. The Menominee used its liquid at both ends: as a gargle for coughs and as a relief from hemorrhoids. The milky white juice from a cut twig served them as an astringent. The Cherokee and Delaware applied sumac for any number of problems that required strong medicine, including gonorrhea.

In the 19th-century United States, the tanning industry combined sumac with hemlock to treat leather, while weavers mixed it with gall nuts as a mordant to fix colors in aniline dyes. Writing in The American Botanist in 1909, Frank Dobbin recalled, “Our grand-mothers too had a use for the sumach. They gathered the fruit or ‘bobs’ as they were called, and by boiling them made a dye that would produce a fine shade of silver gray.”

Its value in leather making and dyes led the citizens of rural Appalachia to gather up its leaves in the fall, stuff them into bales and send them to city markets, a venture worth “tens of thousands a year to the income of the State of Virginia,” according to an 1881 estimate in Scribner’s Monthly.

None of these attributes, though, prevents the sumac from sometimes being scorned as a weed with an incorrigible personality. It can grow from seed, of course, but also from its aggressive underground stems, known as rhizomes, which can run far away from the trunk and sprout new shoots. And at least three species are highly toxic — poison oak, poison sumac and poison ivy.

Rhus vernix, poison sumac, is handsome to look at, but hard to handle. “Rhus rash” was an early epithet. A prevailing belief, bought into by no less an authority than Harvard professor Dr. Asa Gray, dean of 19th-century botanists, that smelling a sumac from as far as 20 feet away spreads infection was in error, however. So was the use of horse urine as a cure. Alfred, Lord Tennyson noted that a sumac species provided an ingredient for the “wourali poison made by the natives of Guiana,” a toxin that in modern times we know as curare. And then there is climbing poison ivy, perhaps the most feared and reviled plant in the New World, the creature that the understated Captain John Smith wrote “causeth redness, itchinge, and lastly blysters …”

While these poison sumac varieties are more easily identified by the fruits, which droop from the branch and are white or gray, staghorn sumacs and other non-poisonous varieties can be spotted by the deeply crimson, round and somewhat-hairy drupes they sport on their upright stalks. These stalks are about eight inches high on the female tree and are eaten by dozens of songbirds and game birds, as well as rodents, rabbits and squirrels. Nature writer John Burroughs, in Wake-Robin, described the flavor of the berry appearing in the honey of particular bees in his neighborhood, who mixed sumac nectar with clover, thyme and linden.

TAKING A CHANCE ON SUMAC

In a small Iowa town in 2003, the local funeral home director, Terry Brosch, was building a new chapel a bit farther off the noisy state highway than his old digs. In the large common room, he wanted a red, brick fireplace to stretch along one wall. Terry also wanted a locally sourced mantle over the hearth, so he went to local woodworker Jack Neuzil for ideas. The two spent part of an afternoon digging through foot after foot of board lumber in Jack’s shop before they came to several quartersawn boards, about six feet long and 10 inches wide, of an unusual coloration: an almost glowing yellowgreen, with bold flowing streaks of dark brown. In fact, under a black light, medium to bright streaks of sumac green glow fluorescently. The boards had been leaning in the stacks for perhaps two decades.

“That’s sumac,” Jack said.

“That’s what I want,” Terry replied. “Will it work?”

Jack showed him a child’s stepstool with a dinosaur carved on its step made from the tree.

The sumac, lighter than oak, but heavier than cedar, was sawn, shaped and dropped into place as the mantle for the town’s new funeral chapel. It stretches five or more feet along the top of the fireplace, where mourners can lean on it and stare into the fire or turn away and face their companions. One board from the original staghorn sumac remained.

Seven years passed, until luck visited my house in the person of one of the elite artists and woodworkers in the Midwest, Thomas Schrunk. Among his many accomplishments, Tom provides Steinway with the veneers for its pianos. He has redone a kitchen for the Royal Crescent Hotel (dating from 1767) in Bath, England, and tabletops for the Prince and Princess of Jodhpur. He has counted Ronald Reagan and Sophia Loren as clients.

Each year, Tom holds a fundraising drawing to benefit one of his wife’s projects, with the winner getting a Schrunk veneer table. This time, Tom drew 200 names from a hat, but “just for fun, I decided to award the prize to the last name drawn, rather than the first,” he said. My name was the very final one drawn. By being last, I won.

Rather than select one of his beautiful tables as my prize, I asked Tom if he would be amenable to building a table a bit out of the ordinary, although from a common species. “Sure,” he said. “What kind of wood did you have in mind?”

“Sumac. There is one board left, from a prodigious tree.”

Silence. Then, “Sounds like fun. Let’s have a look at it.”

Tom was not dubious when he saw the sumac, but he was realistic. “There’s a reason that there are only 20 main furniture-grade species in North America,” he said. I was reminded of Thoreau’s tale in Walden of a kitchen table made of “the apple-tree wood.” If apple, why not sumac?

The reasons for “why not” are many. “There are species that grow straight and tall and drop their lower limbs and have very little in terms of knots,” Tom said. Sumac is not one of those species. But we forged ahead.

I found a pattern for a hexagon table from a 1917 Chicago Public Schools industrial arts manual; it looked like it belonged in my early 20th-century bungalow. Twelve small pieces were all we could manage from our remaining board, which had about five inches of usable width. Tom used air-dried black walnut for the table’s pedestal, base and as a frame for the top — we didn’t have enough sumac left for a complete surface. We carefully laid six five-sided pieces of sumac into the outer part of the top; six more two-inch, equilateral-shaped pieces sat inside.

After the table was complete, Tom and I carefully saved the few sumac scraps of various sizes in a paper sack. None of the pieces was more than two or three inches long and an inch wide, but I had an idea. Jim Kuebelbeck, my father-in-law, was fond of turning multi-wood bowls on his old Sears Craftsman lathe. I dropped off the sack, and in a few weeks, he combined them with black walnut to turn a seveninch candy dish. Now, about all that remained of our mantle tree was sawdust and shavings.

At the time, none of us thought of our work as being in sustainable wood, but that’s what happened. Iowa, where our tree was found, is among the farthest western homes for the staghorn sumac in the United States. After our exhaustion of the lumber from the mantle tree, my father and I went on a search for one of similar size in late 2012. Some can grow, as it did, up to 40 feet high and live decades, but we could only find younger trees, nothing more than 12- to 15-feet tall. Spraying, mowing and controlled burns (the thin bark is not fire tolerant) kept any from reaching older age. No longer collected by Virginians for tanning or dye or by Native Americans for a drinkable ade, the staghorn sumac’s only remaining economic importance, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is erosion control.

As our experience showed, this focus on economics overlooks cultural uses. In A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan tells of being “struck by the amount of cultural freight the various wood species had been made to carry, at least the ones we’ve seen fit to bring indoors.” Pollan was thinking of Danish modern furniture usually made of clear maple or arts and crafts rendered in oak. We were at the other end of this idea: a wood that signified nothing indoors to 21st-century westerners because it almost always stayed outside, uncut. The more my father and I looked at the twisted and bent trunks of smaller trees, the more we appreciated the straight, wide section of our mantle sumac, and its use in furniture, a fireplace and a bowl are extraordinary examples of an ordinary tree that lives on.

Dr. Mark Neuzil teaches environmental communication at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. 

The post The Mantle Sumac appeared first on American Forests.

By Sophia V. Schweitzer

For the past four years, during misty morning hours, Dr. David Flaspohler has been tramping around remote, lava-ringed forest pockets on the slopes of still-active Mauna Loa, Earth’s largest volcano, on the island of Hawai‘i. Far removed from human noise, the ocean shimmering 4,500 feet below, the conservation biologist and avian ecologist from Michigan Technological University stops frequently to listen and look for birds, among them the crimson ‘i‘iwi, elusive ‘ōma‘o and little Hawai‘i ‘elepaio, all species found nowhere else in the world.

In these forests, damp logs populated with lichen and ferns sidle up to native ‘ōlapa trees. Tree ferns with giant fronds reaching 40 feet tall grow alongside gnarly ‘ōhi‘a lehua trees. You may see tall, sturdy koa, a uniquely Hawai’ian rainforest tree, sheltering a universe of epiphytes — plants that grow on other plants — in the crannies of its trunk, while giving plentiful habitat to native species of birds, spiders and insects. The air is heavy with the scent of decaying leaves, the pulse of new and dying life.

Hawai‘i’s rainforests generally include three “structural” species. Koa, ‘ōhi‘a and tree ferns provide the conditions for balanced ecosystems. Under this triad of canopy trees and ferns, a biodiverse understory can exist. Yet, where the forests have vanished, rainforest recovery and restoration aren’t nearly as simple as ensuring the presence of these three species. The reason? Wherever a native species was cleared in the past, a problematic non-native has taken hold.

INVASION

The forest patches of Mauna Loa are known in the Hawai’ian language as kipuka, isolated land areas of varying size surrounded by lava flows dating back to the mid-1800s. They host some of the nation’s most fragile native ecosystems that contain an imperiled biodiversity without equal in the country. “Here’s an evolutionary legacy that’s unique in this world,” Dr. Flaspohler says. “In the history of life on Earth, evolution happened just one time in this way, and it will never happen again.”

Millions of years ago, far removed from any continental landmass, barren volcanic mountains surfaced from the Pacific Ocean. By wind, wings and waves, spores and seeds dropped in, as well as insects, tiny snails and a bat. A pair of finches landed. Few of these accidental arrivals survived, but over time, some species established themselves, adapting to the conditions of their habitat and co-evolving with other species in the neighborhood. The descendants of the finches, for example, evolved into a diverse family of honeycreepers. Variations in bill size and shape gave some individuals an advantage in feeding on new abundant food items like flower nectar, insects and fruits. Such changes became more exaggerated over time as groups of birds moved around and responded to new conditions. In this specialization process called adaptive radiation, single colonizing species formed dozens of new species. The rainforest became one of many unique Hawai’ian ecosystems.

But ever since the arrival of human beings, beginning around 1,700 years ago, Hawai‘i’s ecosystems have been disturbed. Deterioration accelerated dramatically after 1778, when settlers from Europe and the continental mainland began to colonize the islands. Hawai‘i’s self-contained ecosystems held no defense against the thousands of new plants and animals that they brought with them. Native species readily succumbed to introduced weeds, disease and feral livestock. Of Hawai‘i’s 1,000 native plant species growing wild, more than 90 percent are endemic, meaning that they are found nowhere else in the world. But they struggle to maintain themselves amid the 3,000 species of non-native plants.

Some of the non-natives have become problem invaders with the forests being especially hard-hit. Banana poka, a vine introduced to Hawai‘i in the 1920s as an ornamental plant, has spread throughout forests and fields to infest tens of thousands of acres. Brought in from the Azores islands, firetree, often called simply faya, a take on its Latin name, Morella faya, has spread equally beyond control. Hawai‘i has lost 50 percent of its native forests, leading the nation in extinctions and federally listed endangered species. “There’s almost no other place anywhere else in the country with such severe forest loss,” says Dr. James Boyd Friday, a forester with the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at the University of Hawai‘i.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Dr. Friday studies restored koa forests on mauka lands — lands toward the mountains, or inland — across the state. “We aren’t clear yet how to restore rainforests on a larger scale,” he says. “Native forests need so much more than koa, but there is no telling, once you plant a koa tree, if the other species will fall in place.”

Dr. Flaspohler echoes a similar sentiment. “We know so little about these forest patches,” he says. “Our goal, originally, was to help with forest restoration in Hawai‘i because so much of the native forest has been converted to agriculture and pasture over the last centuries. We quickly realized, however, that we need to know much more to be efficient.”

This seems to be a theme in Hawai‘i’s conservation efforts these days: The forests need help, yes, but we can only provide that help with greater understanding of how they work. Scientists are learning surprising new things about the ways in which native and non-native species interact, which may lead to outside-the-box recovery plans over time. Take the kalij pheasant, introduced as a game bird in 1962, and the Japanese white-eye, a songbird intentionally introduced to the islands in 1929 for purposes of bug control. They are intruders, yes, especially the white-eye, which almost certainly competes with honeycreepers for food and habitat. But these birds possibly also fill a niche in the dispersal of native seeds, a task formerly done by native species now extinct. “We have to look much more at the roles of non-native species,” Dr. Friday says. “Can some of them help recovery? Or are the disadvantages greater? It’s a tricky proposition at each turn, but, for example, it may well be that a non-native forest canopy could provide the right conditions for native understory growth recovery. It’s all worth considering right now.”

This is where a new and powerful technology comes in — one that could replace hundreds of hours of hoofing it and prove invaluable for future strategies. For the last decade, Dr. Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University has been leading efforts to create remote sensing imagery of the forests by way of high-altitude aircraft. One technique maps the forest by pinpointing nutrients and other chemicals in the leaves of species. Kahili ginger, which spreads underneath the forest canopy, can be spotted this way. Chemical “fingerprints” show where ‘ōhi’a has been taken over by faya, even in incipient phases. Unexpectedly, the imagery has also shown how introduced species can pave the way for more invaders by altering soil fertility and changing the nutrient cycles of native plants.

Another airborne imaging technique identifies key plant species in a map of the forest’s three-dimensional structure. Combining the “chemical fingerprints” with these 3-D images, the technology couples better detection of the distribution of invasive species with a deeper understanding of their biological effects. “The best management and conservation of Hawai‘i’s forests starts with understanding how they function and how both native and introduced species contribute to forest function,” says Dr. Asner. “Then, we need to map the invaders, and finally, we need to take management interventions that make the most sense in terms of long-term sustainability of Hawai’i’s remaining forests.”

OASES OF HOPE

Head to about 4,000 feet above sea level and you’ll find the entrance to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, where some of that is occurring. An ‘io — Hawai’ian hawk — may watch you warily. When the park’s chief of natural resources management, Dr. Rhonda Loh, looks up from her computer, she might see a curious, crimson ‘apapane, Hawai‘i’s most abundant honeycreeper, fluttering around a tree fern. Dr. Loh’s real office is the forest.

Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park was established on August 1, 1916, primarily to serve visitors drawn to the drama of Hawai‘i’s two active volcanoes, the magnificent Mauna Loa and the smaller, more accessible Kīlauea. Rainforests comprise 47,000 acres of the park’s 333,000 total acreage and are fighting to recover eight species of endangered plants, four endangered native birds, an insect and Hawai‘i’s only bat, the hoary bat. Forest-typical super-invaders such as faya, banana poka, strawberry guava and Kahili ginger are widespread. but many forested pockets in the park harbor native plant communities that aren’t in such bad shape. Dr. Loh and her team focus their work on these Special Ecological Areas (SEAs) foremost because they stand a good chance for recovery.

The park has been successful with these SEAs. In addition to controlling the most invasive plants, the forest pockets are fenced to exclude the damaging effects of feral pigs. “Once the most disruptive plant invaders are under control here, additional measures to reintroduce or augment the number of rare plant species can begin,” explains Dr. Loh. In the popular Thurston rainforest SEA, 2,000 individual plants of 13 rare species of rainforest trees and shrubs were reintroduced after weeds were cleared out. Many have caught on. Species such as a lobelia, native mints and the fragrant ‘alani have taken root.

Thurston serves as a showcase site today for visitors and a research site for scientists. Studies conducted at Thurston have illustrated that the rainforests of Hawai‘i aren’t only beautiful and evolutionarily unique, they also perform ecosystem functions that are vital to life on the islands. Native forests, it turns out, are a prime source for freshwater, intercepting it from the clouds and reducing its runoff. Slight changes in temperature and biodiversity affect their efficiency profoundly. Other research suggests that, in east Hawai`i, invasive plants have already reduced estimated groundwater recharge by 85 million gallons per day. Native forests also capture carbon dioxide from the air much more effectively than forests dominated by invasive plants. “We are starting to understand that even a single species can make a difference to the entire ecosystem, changing the function of the forest,” says Dr. Loh. “So recovery is no longer just about reintroducing or eliminating a plant, but looking at its effects on the larger system.”

HELPING HANDS

With this ever-evolving understanding in hand, recovery now comes down to hands-on work. Lots of it. Within the Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park SEAs, volunteer support is indispensable. Dr. Loh’s passion for the experience of the pristine forest first found an outlet when she began working at the park as a volunteer 20 years ago. Others clearly feel the same: In 2011, 1,058 volunteers logged a cumulative 88,499 hours of service, the equivalent of 43 full-time employees. About 7,000 hours were dedicated to rainforest recovery. Folks happily come together to pull weeds such as Kahili ginger and faya or to locate or plant native trees and rare plants. The nonprofit Friends of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park includes an active forest restoration committee with dozens of enthusiastic participants. “We do it because we enjoy the forest,” says the committee’s co-chair, Mark Johnson, who has been volunteering in the park for more than seven years. “It’s wonderful to be in a native forest, to hear native birds. It’s a great opportunity to visit rare places, to see beautiful specimens of native plants.”

The park also offers student internships and service days for schools and community groups, while welcoming visitors for monthly projects.

Given that nature doesn’t keep to any single SEA, property or even kipuka, broader perspectives and volunteer services are needed as well. Since 2007, nine federal, state and private landowners, whose lands include Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and areas where Drs. Flaspohler and Friday work, have been coordinating their efforts voluntarily through a watershed partnership called Three Mountain Alliance. The partners cover more than one million acres altogether, containing some of the largest expanses of intact native forest remaining in Hawai’i. Three Mountain Alliance coordinates actively with volunteer groups, which has resulted in the planting of thousands of native understory and canopy species.

Will the native forests survive? Newly introduced species come to the forest each day at alarming rates, with one in 10 likely acting as an invader. Chances are a superinvader like faya with the ability to totally change the function and structure of the forests will show up again. Climate change makes things even more unpredictable. Unlike forests on larger landmasses, the forests of Hawai’i cannot move as average temperatures rise.

So while Hawai‘i’s volcanic flora and fauna are supremely adapted to this native land, their recovery may take a long, long time, with many factors affecting the process. No one is giving up the effort to save what still exists, however. Hundreds of people have joined together in a race to save what can be saved for one or more generations. As Dr. Flaspohler says, “The trend of forest bird and plant extinctions that we have seen doesn’t have to continue.”

Freelance author Sophia V. Schweitzer writes from Kapa’au, Hawai’i, and can be reached via her website, www.sophiavschweitzer.com.

The post Islands in the Balance appeared first on American Forests.

By Robin A. Edgar

“A footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness.” This inscription, found on plaques at each end of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, beautifully sums up U.S. Forest Service land-use planner Benton MacKaye’s dream to create what would become the longest continuous, hiking-only footpath in the world.

MacKaye’s essay, “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning,” appeared in the October 1921 issue of Journal of the American Institute of Architects, and work to turn his dream into a reality began quickly, but the trail took more than 15 years to build, requiring the teamwork of a few hundred volunteers working with state and federal agency partners, local trail-maintenance clubs, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the volunteer-based nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC). The trail opened in 1937, and three decades later, the A.T., as it has affectionately come to be known, was designated as the first national scenic trail by the National Trails System Act.

The lands are still managed and maintained by the ATC today — in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service, other state and federal agencies and 31 maintenance clubs — and are administered by the National Park Service. The ranks of volunteers have grown since the original few hundred. More than 6,000 volunteers devote more than 200,000 hours of service annually to managing the trail. In the words of the ATC, “The body of the trail is provided by the land it traverses, and its soul is the living stewardship of the volunteers and workers of the Appalachian Trail community.”

The 2,180 mile-long footpath passes through 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine. Virginia has the most miles of any state — about 550 — while neighboring West Virginia lays claim to just four. Traversing the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains, the trail corridor is 94 percent forested.

Over the years, the trail has undergone a remarkable transformation due to the work of thousands of volunteers. Originally routed straight up and down mountains, trails were highly susceptible to erosion. Trail crews have relocated or rebuilt about 99 percent of the trail in order to maintain and improve the path, making it much more sustainable as well as enjoyable. The trail today is not only better protected, but traverses more scenic landscapes than the original route.

The five million steps needed to walk the entire trail take hikers through six national parks and eight national forests. More than 160,000 white blazes (marks mostly found on the trees along the path) guide them on their way. These hikers must prepare physically and mentally for the hike — from building stamina and breaking in boots by hiking with a full backpack beforehand to buying freeze-dried food and planning menus. Hikers need to be sure to have enough lightweight clothing and a durable tent for any changes in the elements.

By 1969, only 59 people had completed the trail, including former ATC chair, Myron Avery, who became the first to complete the trail just before its official opening. In 1970, the numbers began to rise with 10 people completing the trail, among them Ed Garvey, who made hiking the A.T. popular with the release of his book, Appalachian Hiker: Adventure of a Lifetime.

The term “2,000-miler” came into use in the late 1970s as more people began to complete the trail. By 1980, the total number of 2,000-milers had increased more than tenfold, and that number would double twice by 2000. Today, the ATC has recorded more than 12,000 completions, but total visitor use is estimated to be between two and four million hikers each year.

Mark Wenger, executive director and CEO of the ATC, says, “It is amazing to see the number of people that have taken on the challenge to hike the entire A.T. The trail offers such wonder and beauty, and it is great to see more and more people enjoy this national treasure.”

GOING ALL THE WAY

Some 2,000-milers are “thru hikers” — those who complete the entire trail in one year. Thru hikers will typically begin their journey in Georgia in March. Between August and October, about one in four of them will make it all the way to Maine. Mary and Lue Elder are among those few.
The Elders from Young Harris, Ga., started their thru hike on March 1, 2004, and reached the end of the trail on September 15. Flooding from a big storm prevented them from hiking about 40 miles of the footpath in Maine, but they were otherwise well-prepared. They had backpacked quite a bit together and knew how to plan ahead. They made their own dried fruits and vegetables to go with the freeze-dried meals that filled 24 boxes of supplies for friends and family to mail to several towns close to the trail.

Although Mother Nature was not kind to them towards the end, the Georgia couple experienced a good deal of what they call “trail magic” along the way. They encountered local “trail angels” at campsites and shelters, who would cook hamburgers and hearty breakfasts for backpackers who came through. Those angels meant so much to them that the Elders now camp out every year at a clearing on the Georgia portion of the trail known as Cheese Factory Gap to act as angels themselves.

“We cook hotdogs and hamburgers and provide drinks at night, and then cook a big breakfast for the backpackers that camp with us,” Lue Elder says.

Angels like the Elders also played a major role in the adventures of successful thru-hiker Trevor Thomas from Charlotte, N.C. The first blind person to hike the entire trail unassisted, he says angels helped him the entire way.

Thomas, also known by his trail nickname Zero/Zero, used trekking poles to continually scan for obstructions in front of him while also relying on echo-locating to stay on the path. Noting the way sound refracts off rocks and trees allows him to identify his environment. When there is no ambient noise to guide him, he makes a clicking sound with his tongue, which serves a similar purpose to the squeaking sound a bat makes.
Thomas was delighted to find coolers filled with drinks, oranges and apples at trail crossings. He also got rides to town from angels when he needed to re-supply.

“I do not think, without the benefit of the trail magic people, I would have made it from one end to the other,” he says.

ONE MILE AT A TIME

Others hike the trail section by section, spending parts of each summer covering new territory. Though their journeys are shorter, there are still angels to be encountered along the way — and demons.

Over the Halloween weekend in 2011, a freak snowstorm rolled across Chestnut Ridge above Groseclose, Va. Section-hikers Mark and Carol McCall were, at that moment, hiking along the trail overlooking Burke’s Garden, which they had heard was the most beautiful part of that section of the A.T., but “we couldn’t see anything because of the rain and fog,” says Mark McCall. They’d heard about the snowstorm, but thought it was far enough south that it wouldn’t affect them. They pushed on in the rain and kept climbing higher and higher until the wind picked up, and it began to sleet.

As daylight faded, they realized they wouldn’t make it to the nearest shelter, located on the second highest point on the trail south of New Hampshire, and hastily put up a backpacking tent. Soaking wet and too cold to even make a fire, they crawled into their sleeping bags and ate granola bars and nuts for dinner. During the night, ice covered the outside of the tent as the condensation from their breath soaked the outside of their down sleeping bags.

“We survived the night and, packing our soggy sleeping bags, moved on to the shelter for breakfast,” says Carol McCall. As they descended the other side, the day warmed up enough for them to remove their wet mittens and hats.

The McCalls had been well-prepared with warm layers and food that wouldn’t need to be cooked, but lack of preparation can come back to bite even the most experienced hikers.
Jeff Carter grew up in Florence, Ala., and has been an avid hiker most of his life. He hiked with friends from medical school before moving to Tryon, N.C., in 1984. “One of the reasons I moved to this area is because it is wonderful for hiking,” he says. He and his wife, Sherry, hiked the Great Smoky Mountains together for a few years before deciding to continue on to do the A.T. in 1988.

Even with their experience, they felt it was good to hike with more people in case someone was injured. They decided to invite others to hike the trail as a group. Although several friends — including, once, the McCalls — have joined the Carters over the years, only two have continued to go with them as a group on hike after hike: Bill Crowell, a local blacksmith in Tryon, N.C. who grew up hiking the backwoods in South Carolina, joined the group in 1988. Jeff Byrd, who grew up camping with the Boy Scouts in Alexandria, Va., started hiking with them in 1990 after moving to Tryon to publish its local newspaper. The Tryon group has hiked about a fourth of the trail together over the years.

Although the trail passes through towns where hikers can restock or use the local post office to receive supplies from home, sometimes lack of preparation takes its toll on the how the journey comes out. Jeff Carter remembers a time when he didn’t plan for enough water for the group’s hike at Angel Rock, Va. It was unbearably hot and there weren’t a lot of springs. They ran out of water, turning their carefree hike in the wilderness into what he describes as a death march.

Safety is not the only advantage to hiking in a group, and it was not the Carters’ only reason for inviting others along. They also gain camaraderie. Sharing the breathtaking beauty of the wilderness along the path brings the group together. Everyone has his or her own favorite vista along the A.T., from the purple rhododendron and orange azaleas lining the woods in spring that Sherry Carter fondly remembers to Crowell’s favorite 360-degree view from Rocky Top, N.C.

Jeff Byrd says, “When someone told me about camping in the Southern Appalachians in North Carolina, I remember thinking that sounded like heaven, so I was thrilled when the Carters invited me to go camping with them.

“The hike up to Spence Field was really a rough reintroduction to backpacking for me, and I was really huffing and puffing,” says Byrd about a strenuous hike in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “Jeff Carter stood at the bend of each switchback, encouraging me that it was not that much more to go — for the last two hours. I was beginning to disbelieve him,” he recalls, adding that it was worth it once they reached the ridges and camped high up in the Smokies.

PROTECTING THE TRAIL AND FORESTS

Fellow hikers are not the only ones who rely on each other’s kindness on the trail. The natural environment also needs the respect of those who pass through. All hikers, whether there for a few days or the long haul, can have both a positive and negative impact on the woodlands that line the trail. Hikers can ensure that they preserve the natural setting and its creatures by following the “Leave No Trace” principles.

These principles include staying on the trail as much as possible to avoid trampling vegetation, says the ATC’s Laura Belleville. The seeds of invasive species may attach to hiking boots or clothing and can crowd out the native plants that inhabit the area.

Respecting proscriptions against campfires is also an important part of Leave No Trace and can prevent wildfires that can have a devastating effect. In May 2011, an illegal and improperly extinguished fire at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Ball Brook Campsite in Connecticut demonstrated the importance of Leave No Trace when it spread south along the plateau toward the Riga Shelter half a mile away.

“Conscientious hikers who are aware of the threats to forests can be a very important voice in helping to conserve and manage them,” says Belleville. Well-conserved and managed forests bring A.T. hikers — 2,000-milers and day hikers alike — closer to the “fellowship with the wilderness” that they seek.

Freelance journalist Robin A. Edgar is the author of In My Mother’s Kitchen. She writes from the Carolinas.

For more information:
Appalachian Trail Conservancy www.appalachiantrail.org
Appalachian Mountain Club www.outdoors.org/conservation/trails/at

The post One Step at a Time: Hiking the Appalachian National Scenic Trail appeared first on American Forests.

I arrived at an address I’ve seen on dozens of big tree nominations: the Virginia residence of big tree hunter Byron Carmean. Seeing the stacks of wood, numerous plant and tree species, a chicken coop and a goat named Hatfield reminded me of my grandfather’s farm. I knew I was going to come away from this big tree tour, led by hunting partners Byron and Gary Williamson, with plenty of stories.

The first stop on our trip was to visit the national champion laurel oak. We pulled up in front of John Haggerty’s house and I could see the top of the champ peaking over the roof. I had no idea what to expect as I walked through the living room to get to the backyard, but Byron and Gary were anxious to see my reaction. “Wow!” My jaw dropped and I looked at everyone as if I needed confirmation that this was a big tree. Another big tree hunter had taught me that the first thing you do when introduced to a champion tree is go up and touch the tree. The closer I walked towards the tree, the smaller I felt compared to its enormous size. It was an immediate reminder that, though we see trees every day, we may not always see trees at such a large scale.

In the course of two days, I visited six national champions and four state champions, most of which were in people’s front and back yards, like the flowering dogwood and cherrybark oak. You would think that we would have to have driven hours across the state to see this many trees, but the trees were all in a concentrated area. There was no way you could miss the willow oak and swamp bay that towered over the owners’ houses, the impressive girth of the yellow-poplar estimated to be 500-600 years old or the overcup oak that sits in the middle of the Blackwater River swamp. One day, once the water recedes, I hope to walk up to the base of the overcup oak.

A professional big tree hunter can spot a stand of oddly shaped sumac trees while driving 60 miles per hour down the highway, make a mental note of their location and come back to check out those trees when it’s not rush hour. With my untrained eye, I tried to absorb as much as I could about where certain trees grow, but I definitely have a long way to go to catch up with these two. Byron, a retired biology and horticulture teacher, and Gary, a retired park ranger, have found more than 45 national champion trees in Virginia and North Carolina.

Both were human GPS systems on our tour, as they navigated around Chesapeake, Suffolk, Newport News and Hampton like they had a map drawn on the palm of their hands. They named every swamp, tributary and river we drove past and the ecological habitats in each area. During this trip, I learned that the two big tree hunters are also walking tree identification guides, even pointing out plants we could eat and their native growing range. At times, I thought they were only speaking Latin the way they referred to every species by its scientific name and not just the common name. But, I was thrilled I finally got to see two of the coolest named trees on the National Register of Big Trees in person — the Hercules-club and devil’s-walking stick!

We spotted wild turkeys, bald eagles and hawks, and even saw the remnants of a beaver’s work on a tree. Byron and Gary are what I would call “snake enthusiasts” and have countless snake stories and a photo album to prove it. Gary’s license plate even alludes to his love for rattlesnakes. As someone who is terrified of snakes, I was elated that it was too cold for them to come out. When they asked how I felt about snakes, I replied “Do you want to see a grown person cry?”

One of the highlights of my trip was Jean Carmean’s cooking and hospitality.  She offered us sweet tea and didn’t preface it by saying “do you want sweet or unsweetened?” because we all know there’s only one type of tea. We had an amazing dinner after big tree hunting on Friday and a breakfast of champions to get us started early Saturday morning. Byron, Gary and Jean are some of the nicest and most hospitable people I have met. We exchanged stories about our families and hobbies at dinner and I was able to provide insight into the characters, protestors, noise and political vibe I experience living in Washington D.C.

I looked at photo albums of champion trees in front of the fireplace and got a sneak peak of the oversized three-ring binders that hold every nomination they’ve submitted for the past 30 years.  From being on the front page of the New York Times to helping create the Cypress Bridge Swamp Natural Area Preserve with the discovery of “Big Mama” — a baldcypress that is the biggest known tree in Virginia —Byron and Gary’s accomplishments are well-documented in organized folders and scrapbooks.

This trip was a perfect example of the dedicated and knowledgeable individuals who devote their time to make big tree programs everywhere successful. Every owner takes pride in their tree and takes steps to maintain its health and increase awareness about the importance of trees. I look forward to canoeing with Byron and Gary to see more champion trees and hope to eat more of Jean’s home cooked meals.

The post “From the Field” Extended Version: Big Tree Tour appeared first on American Forests.

When and why did you become a nature photographer?

I enjoy many aspects of photography — landscape and nature photography just happen to be two of them. I can’t pinpoint when I became a nature photographer; I think it more likely became incorporated into my work naturally since I like to explore my surroundings. I really enjoy being out in natural surroundings, even if most of my work takes place close to the city. I like the challenge of finding nature in our urban areas.

Are you drawn to a specific type of nature photography? Wildlife? Landscapes? Detailed close-ups?

I am really drawn to landscapes. When I look any landscape photograph, it takes me on a journey — either through remembering my own journey of taking the photo or, if it is another photographer’s, imagining what they did to get to that place. I place myself in that location.

What was the most difficult image you ever tried to capture?

In general, the most difficult thing for me is getting the right natural light. I like to force myself to use available natural light in a lot of my work. That means getting up very early in the morning and planning where I need to be. I enjoy the morning, but some days, as much as you plan, things go wrong or not as you expected. There have been plenty of mornings waiting for the right light. I remember one photo I did of the Washington Monument and reflecting pool. It was a nice morning so there were a fair number of people around. The morning sky was brilliant with orange, red, blue and purples. There was another photographer set up with his tripod, and I wanted to capture him in the photo. But, I had to wait so I would not get anyone else in the photo. The problem was that the amazing light was not going to wait! But, I got lucky and the tourists moved and I was able to get the photo I wanted. I could have edited out the others, but I’m a bit of purist. I like to photograph things as they are as much as possible.

Do you have a favorite story from your quest for beautiful photographs?

I’m always on a quest to figure out where to go to shoot photos. I heard about a very large field of sunflowers in suburban Montgomery County, Md. I searched online until I found a blog of someone who had found it. Luckily, this person had included map locations. I walked a ways from where I had parked my car on the side of the road and — behold — I was able to find the location in the early morning before sunrise! The field of sunflowers was about the size of three football fields and the sun was coming. It was amazing to see things come alive when the sun came up and to see this spectacular field of sunflowers. Needless to say, I was there for several hours with all my camera gear getting some great photos. I love finding gems like this in a very urban area. An oasis of sunflowers, it felt so far away from the hustle of the Washington, D.C. area.

Where is your favorite shooting location?

Since I am based in the Washington, D.C. area, I would say the National Mall. It offers some wonderful urban landscapes with wonderful sunrise and sunset photo opportunities. Also, Great Falls Park along the Potomac River is an amazing place to photograph. Many people are unaware of the Potomac River gorge and how beautiful and powerful this part of the Potomac River is.

Do you have a favorite photo?

That is always a tough question to ask any artist. I guess my favorite photo is one that I took at sunrise of the classic skyline of Washington, D.C. — the photo featured in American Forests magazine. I took it on Easter morning in 2011. There was low-lying fog around the trees and monuments. Also, the morning light was hitting the tulips in the foreground just right as to make them glow. So, for me, everything to make this photo more unique was in place; good light, the right amount of fog, time of day and an iconic location.

Which other photographers do you admire?

There are two photographers I get inspiration from: Stephen Shore and Lisette Model.  Stephen Shore for his use of everyday common scenes, turning what most people take for granted into the main subject. Lisette Model for her unique take on perspective and isolation of a subject.

Do you prefer digital or film, and why?

This is a tough question. I learned on a fully manual 35mm film camera and develop black and white film. I really enjoy the challenge of getting the photo just right and thinking about your composition. When I shoot digital, I take time to compose also, but I do like the instant results you get with digital. I enjoy shooting both and it depends on my mood. But, I would have to say digital due to the convenience.

The post Close Up With Nature Photographer Eric G. Brown appeared first on American Forests.

His most recent research includes 1) developing ecological computer simulation models for the exploring landscape, fire, and climate dynamics, 2) conducting field research on the sampling, describing, modeling, and mapping of wildland fuel characteristics, and 3) exploring the ecology and restoration of whitebark pine.

Why did you choose to go into forest ecology? 

My undergraduate degree was in Forest Engineering and after four years of engineering coursework and some summer engineering jobs, it was obvious to me that the engineering way of life wasn’t all that appealing to me. However, I did like the forestry part and pursued employment in that area. Right after I graduated, I accepted a job doing research in fire ecology and knew right away that this was my dream job, and I’ve never left. Then, the noted fire ecologist Steve Arno introduced me to whitebark pine ecosystems in the mid-1980s and I was hooked like a Montana trout. I guess you could say that the field picked me rather than the opposite.

What is your favorite aspect of your field? 

I enjoy the mystery of ecology — interpreting ecological clues that may shed light on the complex nature of today’s terrestrial landscapes. Figuring out why ecological responses happen, and using modeling to figure out what these responses mean over time. And it’s never boring because every time you think you understand something in nature, you observe an exception that makes you rethink the entire process.

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

When you’re working in whitebark pine, every day is a holiday because it seems you are always learning something new. Perhaps the most surprising observation was that small seedling and sapling whitebark pine can often be as old as the overstory. This is important because many believe that these small trees will release following restoration treatments or wildfire. Our research has shown that this may not always be the case, as some of these 5-foot tall trees can be well over 200 years old.

What was the most difficult moment that you’ve experienced in pursuit of your work?

Building ecological models is darn hard work, especially if you want the results to be realistic. I was scheduled to give a talk in New Zealand on my modeling findings, but two weeks before the conference I found an obvious error in the simulation results. I spent the next five days and nights trying to find the bug in the model, and then, once I found the problem, I realized that the fix required an entirely new modeling approach. I finally finished reprogramming the model the day before the conference with little sleep and totally exhausted. I was conducting simulations during the conference to show in my presentation. That was easily the most stressful event in my career and one that I never repeated.  The most dangerous moment was when my crew and I got caught in a rare summer blizzard in the Montana high country and became hypothermic because we weren’t dressed for that type of weather. As luck would have it, a trail crew was camped along the trail and had a roaring campfire under a tarp that saved our lives.

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

I have many but here’s one: I’ve eaten an endangered species. Once, when in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, a colleague and I were finishing sampling remote whitebark pine stands and radioed to the Big Prairie Ranger Station that we would be hiking there the next day. They radioed back that they had a surprise for supper — they were barbequing a “mystery” meat. What we didn’t know is that the previous night, a grizzly bear had been raiding tents and chasing people at a camp just north of Big Prairie. The game warden had to be called in and he determined that the bear had been so habituated to humans that it needed to be killed. He shot it that night, but couldn’t leave the meat because it would have attracted other bears. So, being a conscientious and smart warden, he decided it was better to butcher the bear and wrap all the meat for the crews at Big Prairie to eat than to leave it and attract other bears. When we arrived at Big Prairie, we were treated to a wonderful BBQ and then asked to identify the bad-tasting meat. We could not guess the animal and, when told, couldn’t believe that we had actually eaten a species on the endangered species list.

What do you think the biggest issue facing forest health is today?

As an ecologist, I would have to say exotic diseases and insects. If you objectively evaluated the ecological damage wrought by just three agents: white pine blister rust, chestnut blight and gypsy moth, it would be obvious that these introduced agents have altered more ecosystems and have changed more lands than other anthropogenic factors. And, equally damaging is that their impacts are especially long-lasting, making mitigation, remediation or restoration of the damaged ecosystems difficult. It takes the impacted species many years to adapt or overcome the effects of the pathogen or insect. This is quite discouraging to many who hope to return these ecosystems to their historical prominence.

Where was the most interesting, most intriguing, most impactful or favorite place you were able to travel to in the name of science and why?

Over the last 25 years, I’ve spent part of my summers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in central Montana. It holds a special place in my heart. There is a guard station in the center of this special wilderness area that is one of my favorite places on earth — Big Prairie. When you hike there, it is like stepping back in time where life slows down and you can hear the heartbeat of the landscape. I’ve sampled many plant communities in the landscapes surrounding Big Prairie and have enjoyed many campfires with those dedicated people who manage our wilderness. It is truly a state of mind rather than a place.

Who is your favorite fictional scientist and why?
The ecologist/doctor in the movie “Master and Commander.” His passion for science was impressive.

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

I’ve thought about this quite a bit and have narrowed it down to a high school or college teacher, a wilderness ranger, a short order cook or a Peace Corp volunteer, in no special order.

Where is your favorite spot to experience nature and why?

The whitebark pine stands surrounding Missoula Montana. These forests have a very interesting ecology in that the seeds of the whitebark pine are dispersed by a bird, the Clarks Nutcracker, and they are quite beautiful, with amazing views and exceptional natural beauty. The forest is often open-grown and easy to walk through, providing excellent access to all nature has to offer from botanical wonders to wildlife opportunities.

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