Wild about weeds

Flathead National Forest monitoring program puts to good use high-school students' love of the outdoors

James Troyer plucks a leaf the size of a pinkie-fingernail from a plant growing on a Tally Lake Ranger District trail.

He holds it up to a ray of sunlight streaming through the trees.

"Can you see those little holes?" the Bigfork High School sophomore asked.

Tiny pricks of translucence splatter the surface of the leaf. Although it's only a trick of perception played by a layer of colorless oils and resins that let light through, the hypericum perforatum leaf does indeed seem perforated.

St. John's Wort is one of many weeds that Troyer learned to identify as a member of the Flathead National Forest's Youth Forest Monitoring pilot program this summer.

On this day, he is helping re-survey a stretch of the Logan Ecosystem Restoration Project, logging the percent of infestation for each weed species they find in an area covered by each species. This return visit provides comparative data botanists can factor into management decisions.

Rosemary Till and Cory Ravetta, both Flathead High School seniors, hiked and paddled alongside Troyer for five weeks, identifying, mapping and figuring concentrations of weeds in portions of the Flathead Forest and Glacier National Park.

Flathead High School science teacher Lori Ortley was field instructor and crew leader in what turned out to be a remarkably successful first year.

Not only did the teens get a big helping of job experience, but also forest and park botanists now have broader data than their own crews had time to collect.

"There were a lot of added benefits all the way around," Flathead Forest conservation education specialist Teresa Wenum said.

"The students said, 'Wow, look at what we did, look at what we learned. Plus, now we see it a different way.' They felt a part of the group of folks who are out there working. They weren't just interns out there, but rather a part of it," she said.

"They're our future conservation leaders. It's so positive to see these three young people doing positive things in our community."

Troyer's grandparents work for the U.S. Forest Service, his dad and uncle did forest internships when they were his age and, though Troyer still has time to decide, his love of the outdoors could help guide his career path in that direction.

Ravetta combined his International Baccalaureate Programme diploma requirement for community service with a chance to pick up new skills on personal data recorders and a spectrum of GIS and ArcMap software that should inform his future engineering career.

Both Till's parents come from natural-resources backgrounds, but she is exploring all possibilities through the International Baccalaureate program and this summer monitoring.

"I wanted to know what to do with my career," Till said, explaining her leanings toward both natural resources and international elementary education. She had hoped for a clear distinction after participating in the program, "but now I just like both of them more."

Special centennial-year money from the Forest Service paid for the monitoring program, a partnership among Flathead Forest, Glacier National Park, the Crown of the Continent Research Learning Center and Glacier Natural History Association.

On July 20, Flathead Forest supervisor Cathy Barbouletos, district rangers and key program staff got the team's season-ending report.

"They were pretty impressed with the amount of weeds out along the roads, and they were pretty impressed with what [the students] presented," Wenum said of the forest leadership.

"They kind of wowed the leadership team. It's really nice to see three young people who are very well prepared and confident" in their research and interpretation.

It was far more than an exercise in technology and summertime hiking.

"Their data will be used to assess where we need to concentrate treatments or whether we need to have any [treatment] at all," forest botanist Lihn Hoang said.

Hoang helped select survey areas, generate maps, identify plants, enter data and show students how it will be used. She also said their information may help the Forest Service pull together contracts in the spring or develop future mapping.

"They entered data for me that I didn't have to change or interpret at all. It was perfect," Hoang said of the quick learners.

"I have people who are college graduates come and train with me, and it takes them a while to catch on to the concepts," she said. "These students caught on so fast."

Bill Basko, weed program manager for the forest, wants the program to continue.

"I was impressed with what the kids did," Basko said. "I didn't figure we would get a lot of usable information, but in reality we did. It is information we can make real use of for weed analysis and effects."

Early on, he spent a day in the field with the teens, helping them learn to used the hand-held data recorders and understand field inventory programs. Now forest managers can take a look at the effects timber sales have on weed encroachment, and put the data to use in other management areas, he said.

"Not only did it provide us with useful information, but it provided the young people with exposure to land management activities and what we do," Basko said. "I don't know how much they knew before, but I bet they know a whole lot more now."

Ortley, a 10-year science teacher at Flathead High who will begin offering a forestry course and an IB environmental systems course this fall, already plans to work with Wenum to find grant funding to continue the monitoring program next summer.

She is as excited about those prospects as she is about what the three team members accomplished this summer.

"This is the first real data for the Forest Service here," Ortley said. "And it's the first real [hands-on] science for the kids."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.