Baby Boomer Ranger

Fieldtrip: April 16, 2007
Bass Lake Ranger District, Sierra National Forest
In the escort of Denise Blankenship, Denise Tolmie and Mark Lemon

Denise Blankenship, the Forest Fuels Officer invited me along to visit the “Sugarfish” Fuels Project. With a name like Sugarfish, how could I not go see what it was all about?

It has been a long time since I toured a fuels project. This isn’t the kind of fuel you use to fill your car’s gas tank. This is the type of fuel that feeds flames, forest fires, conflagrations. These days, forest fuels projects are top priority, second only to safety and for the last five years the Forest Service has been shifting from timber harvesting to focusing on “forest health.” Land managers are now using a combination of mechanical thinning, prescribed fire and wildland fires to return forest to their historical conditions, thereby making them far less flammable.

My first big shock was not the condition of the forest, but the language used! Defense zone, threat zone, fireshed, needle drape, terra torch, “rip and burn!” And the very real and commonly used acronyms:
SNEP FPA FMA FSA WUI HFRA DBH
SNAMP FMAZ FCCS NEPA EIS FPU TYA
FCCS DFPZ CBH SPLATS FACTS BD SJVUAPCD
People actually know what these stand for and use them in daily conversations.
Take my advice; keep your Fuels Management Lexicon handy.

Fuels Management projects are technically demanding. Multifaceted, complex, and complicated, deep in science, sampling and multidisciplinary balancing, the treatment prescriptions take hundreds of factors into consideration. I have a sincere respect for the training, skill and analytical approach of our Forest Service Staff developing and implementing these plans. They know their stuff.

So, what is a “Sugarfish?” A series of forest vegetation treatments in the Sugar Pine area and the Fish Camp area tied into an adaptive management approach to reducing the spread of fire while increasing the health of the forest. Of course!

I took digital photos with a Nikon D70s, Nikon 18-200 D VR zoom lens. Post processing was accomplished on my iMac using iPhoto and printed by Costco.

Marijuana Grow Site Clean up
Somewhere near Music Mountain, with Forest Service Law Enforcement Officers
Kevin Mayer and John Byas
April 13, 2007

Photos by:
Cynthia A. Whelan
Assistant Lands and Hydroelectric Officer
Sierra National Forest

The bad guys are gone, and the pot plants were hauled away. State, County and Forest Service Law Enforcement Officers continue with their investigations. They made their arrests and moved on to the next incident. But all is not quiet in the Sierra National Forest. A dramatic scene remains — the trash. The trash left behind at illegal marijuana plantations. Trash left to rot in the forest, infiltrate into the food chain and circulate into the ecosystem eventually making its way into the water of the San Joaquin River watershed.

Like a Hot Shot Crew of firefighters ready for initial attack, the High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew assembles for a busy day. After a safety briefing and a cup of coffee, volunteers dawn their hardhats and gloves and ascend up the steep mountainside. What they face is a dense wall of manzanita brush cloaking the bottles, cans, tents, blankets, stoves, clothing, camping equipment, house wares, personal hygiene items, black pipe, fertilizers, rat poison and assorted chemicals left behind.

I was able to go with the crew on their Friday the 13th clean up. With the troop of volunteers, Ed Cole, Forest Supervisor, Sue Exline, and I crawled on our hands and knees, following the black pipe from one abandoned campsite to another. Volunteers gingerly picked up rotting trash, rolled up irrigation pipe and gathered bags for California Highway Helicopter H-40 to haul away. I appreciate that these 25 volunteers didn’t get paid for their work, yet braved the dense brush to clean out 1,500 pounds of trash from our National Forest. Who will take out the trash? The High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew will!

High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew website: www.trailcrew.org

Digital photos were taken with Nikon D70s, using a Nikon 18-200 zoom lens. Post processing was accomplished on my Macintosh computer using iPhoto and printed by Costco.

Now is the time to clean up the files and organize everything that is important. I just received the entire hard copy of the Big Creek ALP Settlement Package and now I need to empty a file drawer and clean out all the old draft documents. Now is the time to complete the Administrative Record for the project. The Administrative Record is the ‘memory’ of what we did and how we did it. It contains all the documentation supporting the decisions we made and the actions we expect to occur.

While we were negotiating the Big Creek Project, I didn’t blog about it because I didn’t want the others to see anything more, or anything less, than what we were at our meetings. But during those meetings I did make a few blog notes to myself. Now that we have an agreement, I can share a few things that won’t be a part of the Administrative Record, and here’s what won’t be kept for prosperity.

“Oh my God! Who decorated this place anyway? I am sitting below one of the ugliest lighting fixtures I have ever seen. I can’t believe someone made that thing, and the hotel spent money on it! SCE must have realized that being surrounded by an ugly room would provide them with a competitive edge. NOTE: Make your enemies sit below scary room decorations while negotiating agreements. They will make your proposals look good. ”

NOTE: They actually think I read this stuff. Always bring lots of books, binders and loose papers to meeting to look like you read the junk they gave you. NOTE: make more time to actually read what they give you.

“NOTE: Whenever you just can’t stand it anymore, get up and get a cup of coffee. You don’t have to look at the pages and pages of papers, you don’t need to squint at the screen, and you will wake up.”

“OH no! Phil is asleep, Julie is asleep, and Julie is asleep. NOTE: before getting up to get a cup of coffee to wake up, first make sure the others are awake! If they are not awake, go back to sleep! I can only fake so much, and if they aren’t awake, it isn’t going to be pretty.”

It’s all a blur… I’m sure I made a notes about something meaningful, but all there is is a blur… seven years of blur…

” OK, everyone is at the wall looking at some maps of something. NOTE: look like I know what they are pointing at and that I actually understand and I am following what they are talking about… NOTE: now is a good time to make up a question that sounds like I know what they are talking about…”

When are they going to bring cookies? How can I listen when I don’t know when the cookies are going to get here? NOTE: how can someone concentrate while there are cookies sitting over there? Cookies can keep people distracted.

NOTE: Always have an exit strategy. Keep an eye on the end product, not just the end of the day. I think they put those signs up to remind people that eventually they get to exit the room and go to a better place… home. NOTE: just click your heals three times and say ‘There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home…’”