Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance received funding from the NFF Matching Awards Program for 2012 projects—including replacing the bridge at Deep Creek. Stacy Karacostas, Communication and Membership Director of Evergreen MTB recaps an impressive day of trail work on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest as told to her by Graham Turnage, Evergreen’s Backcountry Trails Crew Lead.  Five of us met at the trailhead with light snow falling on a chilly Saturday morning in October – four... (Read more…)

Sometimes restoration activities can take months or even years to appreciate the results. Tree-planting for example, can take ten years to even look like new trees—or longer. Stream restoration can take several seasons for the first fish to return. Road removal however, can have nearly instant results—at least to the eye.   This past summer and fall, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust removed 11 miles of unused roads on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and surrounding... (Read more…)

On October 20, 2012, twenty-five volunteers gathered on the Willamette National Forest in Sweet Home, Oregon for the community’s first Friends of the Forest Day. The volunteer stewardship event was not only an opportunity for the local community to get their hands dirty with on the ground restoration project in their “backyard forest,”  but was also a celebration of the Sweet Home Ranger District’s “All Lands Collaborative Approach” to promoting a healthy landscape (and healthy... (Read more…)

Originally posted on The Nature Conservancy Blog on August 27, 2012. A Volvo 480 crawler excavator is a big yellow machine. Weighing in at well over 50 tons, it will move just about anything, such as a 17,000-pound log. Massive logs like these are key ingredients in restoring salmon streams but only if they’re put in the right place. In all, a crew from a local contractor, Southeast Road Builders, carefully placed 325 logs in just the right spots in and along Alaska’s... (Read more…)

Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance received funding from the NFF Matching Awards Program for 2012 projects—including Kettle Fest. Stacy Karacostas, Communication and Membership Director, of Evergreen MTB recaps a fun day of trail-building on the Colville National Forest. The overcast sky is just starting to break on a beautiful July morning as 30-some mountain bikers mill around a campground clearing, swilling coffee and waiting to start the day. They’ve come from all over... (Read more…)

July 7 and 8 more than 60 volunteers spent the weekend at the Coldwater Science and Learning Center at the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Under the watchful eye of Mount St. Helens, volunteers contributed 335 hours of labor and had a little fun while doing so. On Saturday, volunteers prepped and repainted four information kiosks, repaired and refurbished two miles of trails and constructed a quarter mile of new trail. Ten people received... (Read more…)

“It’s like a wilderness out here.”  These were some of the first words overheard as the crew from North Lawndale College Prep High School in Chicago disembarked for their first day of work at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.  The crew of eight students, two student mentors and a faculty leader was hired by the National Forest Foundation to work on projects at the US Forest Service unit located 50 miles southwest of Chicago.   “As part of the National Forest... (Read more…)

This article was originally published in the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Your National Forests , the official magazine of the National Forest Foundation. To read the complete issue, click here .  Shaped by Water Dripping methodically from cavern ceilings, meandering through shady oaks and hickory trees, tumbling over the edge of rocky bluffs – water feeds and shapes and defines the landscape of northern Arkansas and its Ozark National Forest . This sculptor of the Ozarks... (Read more…)

On a recent spring morning, more than 100 volunteers from the Alcoa Fastening Systems Carson Operations arrived at Vogel Flat Picnic Area on the Angeles National Forest for a Friends of the Forest day. Alcoa adopted the picnic area last fall and employees were eager to continue their work. Damaged in the 2009 Station Fire and subsequent debris flows, the picnic area required a variety of improvements and repairs. Despite the presence of half a dozen or so large and... (Read more…)

Have you ever stood in a field of grasses towering over your head? Have you felt small in a wide open sea of grass? Soon the majestic prairie will once again provide a sense of awe for residents and visitors alike. Less than an hour from Chicago, Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie offers visitors a chance to experience Illinois, and much of the Midwest, how it once was: tallgrass prairie. From Army to Prairie Beginning in 1940, the open space of Midewin became the... (Read more…)