The University of Washington Environmental Stewardship & Sustainability office recently released its “Climate of Change” video series, which showcases a variety of sustainability programs, activities and research taking place at UW. Through four half-hour episodes, covering everything from soil to wetlands to recycling, the film series explores a number of projects on campus and at remote facilities—including, in the second episode (“Modeling Sustainability”), Pack Forest and the UW Farm!
The whole episode is very much worth watching (see below), and you can pick up the Pack Forest section about sustainable forestry around the 10th minute. After spending several hours shooting there on a sunny day this past April, the film crew captured some gorgeous footage. The final cut prominently features Professor Greg Ettl, along with a cameo from Julie Baroody, who earned her master’s from SEFS this past summer. (The UW Farm coverage begins shortly afterwards, right around the 20:50 mark, in the final section on the Campus Sustainability Fund.)
The other three episodes include “The University and the World,” “Living the Sustainability Experience,” and “Commitment to the Future.” All four videos are hosted on YouTube and are being aired on UWTV—Channel 27 in the Puget Sound region—on Sundays at 9:30 p.m.
A couple weeks ago, on the first Friday of November, a two-car caravan took off from the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences to catch an early-afternoon ferry out to Vashon Island. With nine graduate students in tow, Professor David Ford was leading the third field trip for his “Principles of Silviculture” course (ESRM 428).
Professor Ford, leaning on his cane, touring the first of two forest sites on Vashon Island.
The first trip had taken the students to Pack Forest to see estate forestry, and the second involved an overnight on the Olympic Peninsula to explore wet forests and densely seeded, large-scale operations. For this third excursion, the class would be touring two examples of community forestry, where they’d find small plots, some only a few acres in size, individually owned and managed, and with varying objectives depending on the landowner. Their guide for both sites would be Derek Churchill, a former Ph.D. student at SEFS who now lives on Vashon Island and works as a private forestry consultant.
Vashon Island’s history makes it an especially fertile study site for forest management. At the beginning of the 1900s, old-growth forests of hemlock, firs and red cedars covered most of the island. Smaller trees, such as alder, found room in sunnier open areas along with huckleberries and other shrubs. By the 1920s, though, most of the island’s forests had been harvested and cleared. The story went that you could stand on a high point at one end of Vashon and see pretty much across the entire island—roughly 13 miles long and eight miles across at its widest point—unimpeded by any mature trees.
At the time, Vashon was home to a number of Japanese strawberry farms, but starting in the Great Depression, and then on a broader scale as part of Japanese internment during World War II, many of those farms were abandoned. Fields that had been planted and tended were suddenly left on their own. Into that vacuum, fast-seeding alder began taking hold and spreading across the island in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Churchill, front left, lives on Vashon Island and works as a private forestry consultant.
Today, roughly 15,000 acres, or about 60 percent of Vashon, have returned to forest. A large portion of that regrowth has involved the rise of alder-dominated forests, which, rather surprisingly, can’t naturally regenerate without human interference—and that presents a tremendous opportunity to test management strategies.
In a more diverse forest, and without the unnatural boundaries of neighborhoods and other development, the ecosystem would likely replenish itself. Yet the sudden abandonment of so much cleared land gave alder, once marginalized, an unusual advantage because they seed and grow quickly. They also tend to promote a thick, tangled understory, which largely prevents new trees from taking root. So as the alder age—often beginning their decline after 60 to 70 years—there aren’t new young trees sprouting to take their place.
In turn, if a landowner did nothing to intervene in an alder-dominated forest, eventually the older trees would die and disappear, and, many years later, they’d be left with an overgrown field—but no forest.
That’s where Churchill gets involved. In his role as a forestry consultant, he advises various landowners about how to manage their forest plots, writing prescriptions for long-term planning and timber harvests. His clients have wide-ranging visions for their land, so each prescription is unique to the landowner. One might care most about wildlife viewing, horse trails or general enjoyment of nature. Some might want minimal thinning, maybe 20-30 percent; others are more aggressive and want a higher percentage of aging trees cleared.
The class tours the second forest site, where taller Douglas-fir are outcompeting Pacific madrone, resulting in some dangerously spindly, leaning and unstable trees.
In most cases, profit is not the primary objective of these harvests. More important for Churchill and the landowner is keeping the forest healthy and sustainable without overly affecting the aesthetic enjoyment of the land. If there’s a harvest here and there to make a little money, that ends up being a nice perk—and these trees definitely have market value. For a long time alder was considered a junk wood, but in the 1990s it started becoming prized for furniture (a single tree, with the right dimensions and age, could be worth more than $1,000).
As Churchill’s work has gained attention and traction around the island, more residents have recognized the importance of actively managing their forests. In fact, to handle an increasing project load more efficiently and sustainably, several years ago Churchill helped found the Vashon Forest Stewards, a nonprofit community forestry business whose mission is to “restore, enhance and maintain healthy native forest ecosystems, and to manage a sustainable ecological business that provides forestry services and island-grown wood products.” The stewards established a local mill, and they also offer educational workshops on forest planning and management, forest ecology and sustainable forestry techniques.
Showing students some of Churchill’s operation and projects, says Professor Ford, is a great way to introduce them to the viability of smaller-scale forestry. With his clients on Vashon, as well as in Seattle and surrounding communities, Churchill isn’t banking on huge harvests for an income. For him, the forests come in smaller patches and plots, and the work is more incremental and less predictable—but it is certainly viable, and plenty creative!
Check out the slideshow below to see more from their trip to Vashon.
This past October, after a year of planning and preparation, the Mount Rainier Institute successfully conducted its first two pilot programs down at Pack Forest!
The idea first germinated with Professor Greg Ettl and the National Park Service several years ago. Since those early meetings, one of the driving forces behind the program has been John Hayes, environmental education program manager at Pack Forest. Working in close partnership with the park service and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Hayes has been drawing up the blueprint for a residential environmental learning center that uses the natural and cultural resources of Mount Rainier National Park and Pack Forest to nurture the next generation of environmental stewards and leaders.
Students from Sequoyah Middle School in Federal Way conduct forest surveys around Pack Forest.
The program would invite school students from all backgrounds—and especially from diverse communities with limited access to parks and other natural spaces—to spend three nights at Pack Forest.
With hands-on experiments and projects within Pack and at Mount Rainier, the goal would be for students to explore science and nature, build confidence in being outdoors, generate interest in careers involving resource management, and generally cultivate a greater appreciation for resource management, national parks and the environment.
Taking Root
After so much work getting the curriculum ready for a test run, Hayes and other project partners were especially excited to welcome the first pilot group from First Creek Middle School in Tacoma—22 students, mostly 7th and 8th graders, and their teachers, Donna Chang and Deb Sanford—for a three-night stay at Pack Forest.
They arrived on October 14, and because of the government shutdown at the time, they were not allowed to visit Mount Rainier until their final morning. But the students had plenty to keep them busy in and around Pack Forest. They visited Alder Dam on the Nisqually River to see hydroelectric power in action, practiced taking photos in the forest, wrote poems, did other journaling and cultural projects, and also conducted a few forest ecology experiments. One group, for instance, looked at plant diversity in old growth compared to younger forests, while another compared wildlife between the two forest types, including doing bird surveys.
“What was special about that is they really went through the scientific process,” says Hayes. “They were given a question in the morning, developed a hypothesis, came up with some methods, collected and analyzed data, and then gave a presentation at the end of the day. They had a great time with it!”
With three overnights at Pack Forest, each group got to spend plenty of time around the campfire.
And that was just while the sun was shining. In the evenings, in addition to enjoying campfires and songs, students learned about the history of the region, from the park service to local tribes and other historical figures, like Fay Fuller, who in 1890 became the first woman to summit Mount Rainier. On the second night, they presented their research findings at the science symposium, and on their final night they went for a night hike to explore adaptations of nocturnal animals—and also how humans react to low visibility. “It was really exciting for a lot of them to be out in the woods without flashlights,” says Hayes.
A week later, the second group, led by teachers Dan Borst and Amy Heritage, arrived from Sequoyah Middle School in Federal Way. Their experience was similar to the first group, except this time Mount Rainier National Park was fully open again, so students got to talk to park staff, visit Paradise and experience much more of the mountain. “For many of them, it was the first time they’d been to the park, and that was a pretty amazing experience,” says Hayes.
Greatly enhancing that experience were several folks from Mount Rainier National Park, starting with Park Superintendent Randy King, who has been a strong supporter from the beginning. “Our National Park Service partners were working along with us shoulder to shoulder throughout the program,” says Hayes, including education specialist Brandi Stewart, education program manager Fawn Bauer, and volunteer program manager Kevin Bacher (who took the wonderful photos featured in this story!), as well as Casey Overturf and Maureen McLean.
Another important component of the curriculum was teaching the kids about different ecosystem services nature provides, from forest products to recreation, building houses and providing jobs, cultural, spiritual and other aesthetic functions. One of the most poignant demonstrations to that effect involved doing a timber cruise and calculating the value of a stand of timber. “That was a real eye-opener for a lot of them,” says Hayes. “They never thought about how valuable forest products are to people, and how much, in a practical sense, it’s worth to cut down and harvest timber. That was contrasted throughout the week with other choices we make in managing our resources.”
Students didn’t just get to conduct experiments in the forest. On the second night, they got to present their findings at a science symposium.
Early Returns
“Given that it was pilot, nothing was perfect,” says Hayes. “We actually only did about a quarter of what we had planned to do, and there are a lot of things we will change and refine in the future. But the teachers were very positive about the experience, and many of them are already trying to organize a trip to come back next year, which is what we’re hoping for.”
Yet for a program designed to train and inspire the next generation of environmental stewards, perhaps the most promising result of the pilots was the enthusiastic reaction from the students. By the end of their few days at Pack Forest, many were openly wishing they could stay longer or come back in the summer. And in interviews with students afterwards, a number of them expressed—nearly verbatim—the messages planners hoped they’d take home.
As one student said of the overall experience: “Now that I have done this Sequoyah to Mount Rainier Institute test run thing, I won’t look at the mountain the same. I used to just look at the mountain like it was just there, and it didn’t like mean anything. But now that I’ve like actually been there and done this, I’ll like always remember the things I’ve done and that I also want to come back here, but I don’t think I can because I’m going into high school. But I want to go back to Mount Rainier someday, and I actually want to climb to the top.”
For many students, this was their first visit to Mount Rainier, and they had a great time exploring the mountain (and having snowball fights, of course).
Or as another student reflected on the science projects they completed and presented at the symposium: “I liked that we put purpose to what we did. We didn’t just do it and forget about it. We like actually did something when we got back, so it wasn’t like we were just doing it, we did something with it.”
That kind of feedback has Hayes and the rest of the institute team fired up to get the program fully up and running. They’re hoping to kick off the first full season in the fall of 2014, with the target of reaching about 1,000 students in that first year.
“It’s a daunting goal,” says Hayes, “but one we’re going to push hard to try to make happen!”
As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, I had a pretty romantic view of forests, mountains, park rangers and foresters. I was too young to recognize some of the depleted woodlands to the north, but I definitely saw burly, 30-foot Paul Bunyan statues proudly displayed in towns across the state, and I equated the life of a forester with being outdoors and being a conservationist. And why not? Some of the greatest minds in conservation were initially foresters, including Aldo Leopold and John Muir, who both have deep connections in Wisconsin and in forest management—even though today these icons of land conservation are rarely described as foresters.
Muir was born in Scotland but grew up in Wisconsin. After he completed degrees in botany at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he went to work as a forester and as a sawyer at a lumber mill in Indiana before heading west to ultimately promote land preservation. Leopold was born in Iowa but worked much of his life as a forester. He eventually joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, and through his observations in the woods created the notion of practical conservation and described the land ethic that lives on in many of us today.
So as I look out at our students in the halls this fall, I wonder about their connection to the land, and how they reflect on terms such as wilderness, conservation, forests, forestry and foresters. I wonder if they grew up in neighborhoods where they could escape to stroll through the woods and peacefully observe natural ecosystems at work. I also wonder, in this age of reality television and social media, if the concept of sustainable forest management can even compete with their screens—or if all that breaks through the stream of split-second updates are visions of clear-cutting, or an ESPN highlight of lumberjacks sawing for sport.
A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, is the collection of essays in which Aldo Leopold described his “land ethic.”
After all, our population in the United States is increasingly urban, with current estimates that 80 percent of us now live in or around cities. That figure is growing by 1.2 percent every year, and the burgeoning Greater Puget Sound area alone could absorb 60 percent growth in the next 50 years. With this increasing urbanization often comes a dwindling understanding of both natural and working landscapes, and the role these lands play in our overall wellbeing.
That’s why we have such an important responsibility with conservation and forestry education here in this urban setting of Seattle. We are uniquely positioned to strengthen environmental values our students bring with them, and to cultivate new ties to the land. As professors and researchers and mentors, our mission is to teach our students about the value of forests and forest products in creating a sustainable society. Most importantly, it’s our job to train a workforce that can effectively manage these lands in a manner that simultaneously protects biodiversity and clean water and delivers an enduring supply of renewable building materials and other alternative forest products.
During the next 10 years, I hope to see forestry once again broadly equated with conservation and a strong ethic for the land. Developing that relationship, of course, is a lifelong process, and we now have programs in place at Pack Forest and the UW Botanic Gardens with the specific goal of getting kids out into the woods, and to initiate a relationship with the natural world at an early age. I’m excited to see that education nourished from preschool through high school, and to capture those budding foresters and conservationists in our undergraduate and graduate programs. With each class we reach, I can’t help but feel optimistic about the future of forestry—and our role in making sure forests and forest products play in central role in building a sustainable future for generations to come.
One of the challenges of working at a large university, even if you’re part of a smaller school within it, is getting to meet all of your colleagues. Professors are often scattered to remote study areas or holed up in labs, and everybody seems to have a different research specialty. It’s hard enough learning who they are and what they do, let alone where they’re from, or what kinds of stories lurk behind their casual hellos and handshakes.
At the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS), the challenge is doubly hard for those who work at field sites away from the main campus. They don’t get to bump into folks in the coffee room, have a beer after a seminar, or swap news and jokes before meetings. Most interactions occur over the phone or email, and you can go months—even years—knowing someone only by their name announcing itself in your inbox.
Pat Saunders having what she called a “Badlands Hair Day.” While camping in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, she says the wind was so bad your chair would get swept away as soon as you stood up.
Today it might be “Pat Saunders” who crops up in the corner of Outlook as you take your first sips of coffee. You’ve communicated with her before, no doubt, and familiar details break through your morning haze. You know she works down at Pack Forest and assists Professor Greg Ettl in his role as director of the Center for Sustainable Forestry. You might also know that she oversees staff who manage the daily operations of the conference center and 10,000 square feet of building space, and that at any given moment she could be budgeting, working with students on a class trip, organizing a research trip, giving forest tours or rescuing lost hikers.
But you’re only scratching the surface. You know there’s more to her story, and that if you pulled up a seat next to her and uncorked a bottle, you’d be in store for hours of entertainment and education, and likely a surprise or two—and you’d be right!
The Maine Concern
Pat Saunders grew up in the small coastal town of Surry, Maine, near Acadia National Park. The community of about 1,500 is located in a part of the state known as “Down East,” nautical slang from the days when ships from Boston would sail east to ports along the Maine coast (even though they’d be heading northeast, the wind would be at their backs so they’d technically be sailing downwind, hence the oddly contradictory “down east”). Timber and fishing were the primary industries, as well as tourism in nearby beach towns during the fleeting summertime.
Saunders (left) with her oldest sister Crickie and her son Bryan in Seattle.
Saunders lived in Maine for most of her life until her son Bryan, who had moved out to Seattle, suffered a serious motorcycle accident near the end of 2007. To help with his recovery, she flew out and lived with him for five months as he worked through physical therapy. It took nearly a year before he fully recovered from his injuries, but his mom was enormously thankful for the happy outcome. “The good news is he was fully geared up with helmet and gloves,” she says. “It could have been much worse.”
Not long after Saunders returned to Maine, though, she started thinking she might want to make a permanent move to Seattle. She knew that would mean leaving behind three sisters and a brother, loads of friends and a lifetime of memories. And there was one other potential holdup: Would her son consider it weird if she moved out to live near him?
She called Bryan to ask what he thought, and he gave her an enthusiastic endorsement. Then the wheels really starting turning, as Saunders packed up her things and invited Candy, her best friend of 25 years, to drive and camp their way across the country in the fall of 2008.
Their road trip started with a leg from Maine to Indianapolis to stay with a friend. Next they headed up to Gary, Ind., and skirted around Lake Michigan and Chicago. From there it was a straight shot on Interstate 90 to Seattle—a shade more than 2,000 miles—with plenty of new states to experience. “We had two rules,” says Saunders. “We couldn’t eat in any restaurant you could find somewhere else in the world, and we had to buy a six-pack of local beer in every state we visited.”
They had set out near the end of September, so as they crossed the Great Plains into Montana and the Pacific Northwest, they were often hitting campgrounds about to be shuttered for the season. “We closed down the state parks all the way across the country,” she says. “But we had a beautiful trip. It was gorgeous.”
Into the Woods
During her first few months in Seattle, she lived with Bryan while searching for interesting job opportunities. Then one day she came across a position advertised down at Pack Forest, and she felt an instant connection.
Having grown up around her family’s wooded land in Maine, Saunders–pictured here with her son Bryan–felt an immediate connection with Pack Forest.
Back home in Maine, her family has managed a 1,000-acre wood lot for generations. She grew up walking the land, going out with her grandfather and father, cutting wood and marking boundaries. “My father always had this dream that I’d be the forester in the family,” she says, and she learned to identify the conifers and firs and pines and hemlock, and all the hardwoods like maples, ash, elms and oaks. She shared the same lessons with her son, showing him changes in the forest during the seasons and as years passed. “When you walk on the land, you know it,” she says. “I can look at that forest going back 50 years now. It’s in my blood.”
So when she landed the job and moved down to Eatonville, Wash., she felt right at home among the towering woods of Pack Forest and nearby Mount Rainier National Park. She’s one of eight permanent staff members based there, helping oversee 4,300 acres of working forest, as well as conference and housing facilities. Her commute is only four miles, and she loves the familiar small town atmosphere—but also the proximity to a bigger city. “I like where I’m at,” she says. “It’s great to come to work in a place that’s absolutely stunning. I can walk out of my office and go 500 yards and be in the middle of the forest, and yet I’m only an hour and a half from Seattle.”
Saunders believes the same joy she feels at Pack Forest is what makes it such an important educational resource for SEFS and other UW departments. She’d like to see far more students come down and experience the forest, whether as part of a spring planting or summer crew, or on field trips with other courses. “There’s so much here,” she says. “It’s just a great living laboratory and classroom, and when you immerse yourself in the environment, I think it gives you a different understanding.”
Written in Ink Switching coasts after so many years as a New Englander naturally brought some huge changes. Leaving behind family has been the toughest part, she says, but she’s embraced other adjustments—like saying goodbye to black flies and swarms of mosquitoes—with a bit more gusto. Then there was the issue of Maine’s long winters of brutal cold and snow. Out here, she can handle all the mist and drizzle Seattle can wring from the sky. After all, she says, “you don’t have to shovel rain.”
Saunders and her new granddaughter, Darius.
One bittersweet irony of her relocation is that her son has since moved back to Maine. Yet then he got married and now has a brand-new 2-month-old daughter named Darius, so on balance Saunders doesn’t feel too cheated in the bargain. She loves where she is and what she’s doing, and her time together with Bryan in Seattle, though born from tragedy and more temporary than expected, became one of her most treasured periods.
In fact, she has more than memories as a keepsake from that special time.
Back when she was helping care for Bryan after the accident, she spent a great deal of time with his roommates in their house. “He was living with a group of 20-somethings,” she says. “They were incredibly amazing helping him and being really supportive, and I grew close to them.”
Among their house traditions was watching episodes of Battlestar Gallactica (BSG)—the new version, not the original television series that first aired in 1978. “I’m a real science fiction nerd,” says Saunders, “and Friday night was always BSG night. I would drive up from Eatonville to watch the show, and we’d all pile in.”
Their Friday gatherings eventually came to an end when the friends had to move out of the house. Parting wasn’t easy, so in addition to a moving-out party, they decided to come up with another way to commemorate their friendships and emotional bond: getting a group tattoo.
“Since the tattoo is on my back, I sometimes forget it’s there,” says Saunders. “I went to a chiropractor once and he commented, ‘I see you like Bonnie Tyler.’ I was impressed he could tell so much from my spine and told him so. He looked at me oddly and said, ‘I was referring to your tattoo!'”
“I’d always said I’d never get a tattoo unless it was really meaningful,” she says, but this felt like the right time. They came up with a design that has the BSG logo and the name of the house, SS AS (the “Sailing Ship Awful Shark”), and around the outside is “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which they used to play at the end of all their house parties. Everyone in the gang got the same tattoo, but they chose different body locations, depending on personal preferences. Saunders opted for the middle of her upper back. “I had to find a place that as I aged and wrinkled and sagged, it would not!”
Getting the tattoo didn’t hurt as much as she expected, but she was glad when it was over. “Believe me,” she says, “childbirth is much more painful.”
Now, anytime she catches a glimpse of her tattoo, she sees a powerful reminder of what brought her to Seattle, the friends she’s made, and priceless memories with her son. If there’s any ink you’d like to be permanent, that would probably be it.
Next weekend, May 11 and 12, one of the oldest outdoor traditions at the University of Washington will be taking place down at Pack Forest. Hosted by the UW Forest Club—the longest-running club on campus—“Garb Day” is a throwback to the early days of the university, when folks tended to show up dressed more professionally for school. On this day, though, students and faculty had a chance to dress in more informal “garb” while relaxing together and playing field games and logging sports.
The days of formal clothes on campus have largely passed, and logging sports have become a little too much of a liability, but the annual Garb Day tradition lives on!
So what’s on tap for the celebration this year?
The logging sports are no more, but Garb Day still offers loads of outdoor games and activities at Pack Forest!
The Forest Club is arranging vans to depart from the C10 parking lot at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, May 11. (If you want to be part of this caravan, you have to let them know no later than the end of day tomorrow, May 3!) Events are expected to kick off at Pack Forest between 10 a.m. and noon, and they’ll last all day and overnight. There will be live music, a salmon feast with hamburgers and veggie burgers and other treats, fun field games—like tug-of-war, scavenger hunts and three-legged races—and prizes to give away. You’ll need to bring your own tent to camp, though a few beds will be available in cabins on a first-come, first-served basis for $7 per person; you’ll need your own linens.
Most activities will take place on Saturday, says Kaitlyn Schwindt, a senior ESRM major and president of the Forest Club, and participants should expect to get home on Sunday by noon or 1 p.m.—in plenty of time for Mother’s Day festivities.
The Forest Club cut and sold more than 300 Christmas trees to help fund this year’s Garb Day festivities.
This year, the Forest Club cut and sold more than 300 Christmas trees to help fund the Garb Day celebration for their fellow colleagues, staff and friends. A group of about a dozen Forest Club members also went down to Pack Forest during Spring Break—helping with the annual spring planting and chopping wood—to earn a discount for renting the facility for Garb Day. So come down for the Garb Day fun and reward their efforts and preparation!
Tickets are $25 (you can pay when you get there, so it’s never too late to decide to join), and the Forest Club is offering half off for faculty and staff! You can pick up your tickets from Amanda Davis in the Advising Office in Anderson Hall. Your ticket covers the cost of all food, games and transportation, but remember if you want a spot in a van on the way down, you have to send them an email by this Friday, May 3!
DIRECTIONS
If you’re driving separately, the best route to Pack Forest from Seattle is to take I-5 south to Tacoma, then take exit 127 for WA-512 E toward Puyallup. Turn left onto 512. Stay in the far righthand lane as you will take the Steele Street exit (which is about 0.2 miles down 512). Turn left at Steele Street South. Continue straight through intersections as the road changes from Steele Street into 116th Street, and finally into the Spanaway Loop Road that will bring you to WA-7 S (after a long sweeping turn through a light where the Cross Base Highway will eventually be constructed). Turn right onto Rt. 7 and travel about 20 miles to the entrance of Pack Forest, which will be on your left. Driving time—off-peak hours—is about 1.75 hours.
In 1923, Charles Lathrop Pack had the foresight to establish an essay competition so that students in the College of Forest Resources would “express themselves to the public and write about forestry in a way that affects or interests the public.” His original mandate continues today at SEFS—as does the unwavering value of good written communication—and we are pleased to announce the 2013 edition of the Charles Lathrop Pack Essay Competition!
Think you have the winning words? The prize for top essays is $500, and the field of potential topics is almost endless. That said, there are some important rules to follow, so here’s the rundown: Essay criteria: All submitted essays should address this year’s prompt: Is variable density thinning a better silvicultural approach for sustainable forestry in Western Washington than clearcut harvest practices? You must justify your answer from a political, ecological and economic point of view. You are expected to provide a technical perspective, addressing a diverse and educated audience that needs further knowledge of natural resource issues. All essays must be original to the competition, though course papers substantially restructured to meet these guidelines are acceptable; however, no group entries are permitted. References and quotes are acceptable only when sources are clearly indicated; direct quotes should be used sparingly. Entries should be typed, double-spaced (one side of paper only), and may not exceed 2,000 words. Students should include a cover page with student name and title of the essay.
Eligibility: The competition is open to juniors, seniors and graduate students enrolled in SEFS during Spring Quarter 2013 who have not yet received a graduate-level degree from any institution. Undergraduate and graduate essays will be judged in separate categories.
Judging: A Judging Committee will be selected to assess originality, organization, mastery of subject, objectivity, clarity, forcefulness of writing, literary merit and conciseness. The Committee will reserve the right to withhold the prize if no entry meets acceptable standards. The Committee may also award more than one prize for outstanding entries if funds permit. Winning papers will be posted on the Center for Sustainable Forestry at Pack Forest website, and might also be featured on the SEFS blog, “Offshoots,” and in the School’s e-newsletter, The Straight Grain. (Check out a sampling of previous winning papers to get a sense of the style and content).
Entries are due by April 29, 2013, and should be printed and delivered to Student and Academic Services in AND 116/130.
If you have any questions about the competition, or if you’d like to see if your essay idea sounds promising and appropriate, email Professor Greg Ettl. Otherwise, get typing!
Two summers ago in 2011, John Simeone was working on the summer crew at Pack Forest with Professor Greg Ettl. He was a first-year graduate student with the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS), and he spent his daylight hours working on long-term site surveys, trail maintenance and other research projects. Simeone loved it.
“Pack Forest is a beautiful plot of land,” he says, and just about every weekend he’d hop over to Mount Rainier National Park to hike and camp.
That summer also fed another of Simeone’s outdoor passions: photography. He had picked up the hobby pretty seriously in high school, and he eventually even had his own black-and-white dark room. So with endless days deep in the woods, and faced with spectacular forest and mountain settings on all sides, he took scores of photos on his Nikon D60.
John Simeone’s winning photo entry from Pack Forest, “Stand of Red Alders (Alnus rubra).”
Months later, while researching the new European Union Timber Regulation, Simeone stumbled across a photo contest with the European Forest Institute (EFI). For all of his years snapping pictures, Simeone had never submitted one of his images to a competition. But this time he decided to send one of his shots from Pack Forest. “It was a fluke, totally a whim,” he says.
EFI planned to select one photo to showcase for each month of 2013 as part of their 20th anniversary celebration. And last month, for February, they rewarded Simeone’s whim—and made his month—by featuring his entry: “Stand of Red Alders (Alnus rubra)!”
Photography, of course, is only a side pursuit for Simeone at the University of Washington. He grew up outside of New York City and attended Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and in 2010 he ventured to Seattle to begin working on a Master’s Degree at the Jackson School of International Studies (Russian Studies). A year later he made it a dual degree by adding forestry at SEFS.
The two fields—forestry and Russian—may seem like an unusual pairing, but for Simeone it’s a rather natural fit.
He first started studying the Russian language in high school, and after graduation he spent a gap year living in the small Russian city of Vladimir, about 115 miles northeast of Moscow. He was only 18 and 19 at the time, and the experience sealed his interest in the country and language. “It was amazing,” he says. “It made me fall in love with Russia.”
Simeone with his fiancé Erika Knight in the North Cascades; a fellow SEFS graduate student, Knight is working on her MS with Professor Rob Harrison in the Forest Soils lab.
During the same time abroad, he began cultivating a deeper interest in forestry and conservation. “Russia contains a quarter of the world’s forests,” says Simeone, and the nation is opening up vast areas of virgin forest for logging—with a host of implications ranging from impacts on sensitive wildlife populations to natural resource management and trade policy.
As a graduate student, Simeone’s research interests now include the emerging markets in forest trade and production in the Russian Far East and Siberia, and the extension of trade to China. His faculty advisor at SEFS is Professor Sergey Rabotyagov, and he is also working closely with Professor Ivan Eastin and CINTRAFOR on Russia’s role in the timber trade. (He presented on some of his research at the Graduate Student Symposium a couple weeks ago on Friday, March 8.)
Simeone has been balancing his economic and trade studies with on-the-ground forestry training, including taking Professor David Ford’s silviculture class, Professor Jerry Franklin’s course on old-growth forest management, and the summer internship at Pack Forest. Though he’s not sure where he’ll end up career-wise, he says his “pie in the sky” dream would be to put his Russian and forestry background to work as a trade analyst with the United Nations, or possibly with the Forest Service in their international division.
(Also, Simeone recently co-authored a short photo essay on his summer travels to Vladivostok, Russia, for UW’s Ellison Center Winter 2013 Newsletter. Half of the photos are his, and the other half were taken by Taylor Zajicek’s, who is also working on his MA in Russian Studies.)
For more than 75 years, students have been putting down roots at Pack Forest, helping to shape it for future generations. This Spring Break, you can leave your own mark by taking part in the annual spring planting, March 24-30!
While staying at Pack Forest, you’ll roll up your sleeves and work on forest establishment, including planting, regeneration surveys and survey reports. Your housing (and some food) will be covered, there’s a kitchen at your disposal, and you’ll even earn a $200 stipend.
Contact Professor Greg Ettl for more details or to sign up. Registration closes on Monday, February 25, so act fast!
