Increasing the Pace and Scale of Forest Restoration and the Breadth and Depth of Forest Restoration Partnerships in Idaho.
Location
USU Eccles Conference Center
Event Website
https://www.restoringthewest.org/
Abstract
In 2012, high winds drove the Mustang Fire out of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and toward Gibbonsville, Idaho. When the fire hit the Hughes Creek drainage, it encountered an open stand of large Ponderosa pine that had been recently thinned. The treated area provided safe access to the fireline, helped protect structures, and provided an opportunity for back burning and aerial ignitions. The fire dropped to the ground and no structures were harmed.
The Hughes Creek restoration project was the first commercial timber project in the area that had not been appealed in over a decade. A local collaborative group, the Lemhi Forest Restoration Collaborative Group, played a key role in developing this project. Since then, this collaborative has helped craft several other landscape scale projects, including one in an Inventoried Roadless Area.
This is not an isolated story. Several other collaborative groups have formed in Idaho to develop forest restoration projects and shepherd them through implementation. The Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership (IFRP) is an umbrella group which supports these different collaboratives and helps them tell their stories. John Robison is a member of both the Lemhi group and the IFRP and will discuss the trends in forest restoration in Idaho.
Increasing the Pace and Scale of Forest Restoration and the Breadth and Depth of Forest Restoration Partnerships in Idaho.
USU Eccles Conference Center
In 2012, high winds drove the Mustang Fire out of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and toward Gibbonsville, Idaho. When the fire hit the Hughes Creek drainage, it encountered an open stand of large Ponderosa pine that had been recently thinned. The treated area provided safe access to the fireline, helped protect structures, and provided an opportunity for back burning and aerial ignitions. The fire dropped to the ground and no structures were harmed.
The Hughes Creek restoration project was the first commercial timber project in the area that had not been appealed in over a decade. A local collaborative group, the Lemhi Forest Restoration Collaborative Group, played a key role in developing this project. Since then, this collaborative has helped craft several other landscape scale projects, including one in an Inventoried Roadless Area.
This is not an isolated story. Several other collaborative groups have formed in Idaho to develop forest restoration projects and shepherd them through implementation. The Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership (IFRP) is an umbrella group which supports these different collaboratives and helps them tell their stories. John Robison is a member of both the Lemhi group and the IFRP and will discuss the trends in forest restoration in Idaho.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/rtw/2017/Oct18/10
Comments
John Robison is the Idaho Conservation League’s Public Lands Director. John has been working on forest restoration issues for the Idaho Conservation League since 2002. John has served on the Lemhi Forest Restoration Group, the Payette Forest Coalition and the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership. John first came to Idaho in 1991 on an 11-day kayaking and fishing trip. John has a master’s degree in botany from the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program and a BA in biology from Bowdoin College. Before moving to Idaho in 2001, he ran a field science program for the Canyonlands Field Institute in Moab Utah and taught forest ecology at the Teton Science School. When not working to protect and restore Idaho’s public lands and rivers, he is out enjoying them. He lives in Boise with his wife and twin daughters.