Member Highlight: Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest

Earlier this month I met with Loyal Clark who is the Public Affairs Specialist for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. I visited this USEE Institutional Member’s offices in Provo, UT, to find out more about the programs and services that they offer.

Loyal took me on a tour of their offices, which are located in the Will J. Robinson Federal Building, and I was able to meet most of the staff that works for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. There are quite a few people who work there, including civil engineers, cartographers, biologists, and administrative staff. It was very eye-opening for me because, though I know there are a lot of things happening in National Forests with many different career options, the Forest Service so often means forest rangers and fire fighters to me. I also learned about the services the Forest Service provides such as fire and forest management, campground and infrastructure maintenance, hunting information, maps (for trails and for other things such as grazing and water sheds), fire safety information, and all things Smokey Bear.

In addition to touring the building and talking with the staff, Loyal also showed me all of the different environmental education programs that the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest houses and they have some cool stuff! The staff often do school visits on request to talk about the forest. Most of these requests are from 3rd-5th grade teachers, but can accommodate any grade level. They also receive a lot of requests from high schools as well to talk about the different career opportunities within the Forest Service.

They also house educational displays that teachers can check out to use to teach their students about various environmental education topics such as climate change, watersheds, and others. They also have educational boxes that have curriculum, books, games, and specimens that teachers can check out for 2 weeks at a time to take back to their classrooms. Currently they have boxes about bats, insects, and tread lightly. Loyal is currently working to develop three new boxes in addition to the three they already have: climate change, the water cycle, and bark beetles.

Uinta-Wasatch-Cache also has more environmental and science education on their website. Just look for the “Learning Center” tab on the right hand side. There are pages about various outdoor education experiences, conservation education, the history and culture of the forest, outdoor safety and ethics, and pages for kids and teachers and parents.

Another excellent program the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest houses is the Diamond Fork Youth Forest. This outdoor learning environment is a natural outdoor laboratory where students are directly involved with a wide range of recreational and educational projects. For more information about the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest’s educational programs or the Diamond Fork Youth forest, visit their websites below:

Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest
Diamond Fork Youth Forest

Thank you so much Loyal and the staff at the Provo office for letting me come and spend a day learning about your programs!
Photo Credits:

Wellsville Mountains - Becky Blankenship
Kids in the Snowy Woods - Cottonwood Canyons Foundation

Wild About Utah: Pinyon Jays

Few birds have such a strong association with one plant that the plant's name becomes part of the bird's name. Sage grouse is one, Acorn Woodpecker another, but the Pinyon Jay is our topic today. Pinyon Jays are usually found in close association with pinyon-juniper forests throughout the Great Basin and the nutritious nuts of the pinyon pine are their preferred food. The blue and grey birds collect and cache pinyon nuts in summer and fall for later consumption. They have an uncanny recovery accuracy and excellent spatial memory, which allows them to rediscover these scattered caches and eat pinyon nuts all year. They do not recover all the stored seeds, however, and therefore aid in the dispersal of pinyon pines.

Pinyon Jays have a complex social organization and are highly gregarious. They spend their lives in large flocks of up to 150 or more individuals. Nesting is communal, although rarely are there more than 2 or 3 nests per tree. Breeding season is in late winter. Many birds spend their entire lives in the flock into which they were born.

Pinyon Jays are not migratory, but they tend to be nomadic; traveling to wherever there is a good crop of pinyon nuts. They will also eat a wide variety of seeds, insects and berries to supplement their diet and can be found in adjoining sagebrush, ponderosa pine forest and riparian habitats. The conservation status of Pinyon Jays is considered vulnerable. Destruction of pinyon-juniper forests for grazing and changes in fire regimes have resulted in loss of habitat. And what is a Pinyon Jay to do without its pinyon nuts?

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Pictures: Courtesy and Copyright © 2005 Marlene Foard, as found on utahbirds.org

Text: Linda Kervin, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Wild About Utah: American Pronghorn

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

The American pronghorn has an identity problem. It’s Latin name Antilocapra Americana means “American antelope goat.” But the fleet-footed animal of the American West is neither an antelope nor a goat. It is the sole survivor of a family of hooved animals that flourished in the Miocene, from 7-25 million years ago. More than 13 species of that family have been found in the fossil record, but only one pronghorn survived to modern times.

Many consider the pronghorn to be the fastest land animal in the world. Certain individuals have been clocked up to 60 miles an hour. It’s true that cheetah can go 70 miles per hour,--but only for several hundred yards. The pronghorn on the other hand, can go for great distances at high speed without breaking a sweat, leaving pursuers such as coyotes and wolves in the dust. Mountain lions occasionally creep up behind them, but that’s tricky in the open grasslands and shrub steppe that pronghorns prefer. Simply put, no land mammal on earth can keep up with the pronghorn over a significant distance.

So why is this animal so implausibly fast? John Byers of the University of Idaho believes that the pronghorn and its relatives evolved traits to enhance speed under the influence of ghost predators. These predators are now extinct but their existence is memorialized through the adapted traits of their prey.

Before the late Pleistocene extinction, a variety of carnivorous megafauna filled grasslands often referred to as the American Serengeti. The giant short-faced bear, the American lion, a jaguar, a form of hyena and the saber-toothed cat were likely ambush predators of the pronghorn. But the most compelling reason for the pronghorn’s improbable speed is the presence of the North American cheetah. This long -limbed cat with powerful heart and lung capacity set off an evolutionary arms race with the pronghorn. Natural selection favored speed since slow cats went hungry and slow pronghorns were devoured.

Nowadays, lacking the need for such swift getaways, it’s possible that the pronghorn has slowed down. But if slowing down is 60 miles an hour, imagine what a high speed chase with the powerful prehistoric cheetah must have been like!

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy US FWS Digital Library
Text: Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center

Wild About Utah is a weekly nature series produced by Utah Public Radio in cooperation with Stokes Nature Center and Bridgerland Audubon Society. Archives of the program can be found at www.wildaboututah.org.

Dairy Products and Goats

Have you ever wanted to know more about dairy products from goats? Sunnybrooke Farm in Sandy, UT, is hosting a class about harvesting your own dairy products from goats! During each session the following items are discussed:

• Cows vs. Goats
• Proper feeding and nutrition
• Housing/Fencing
• Required space and options for you if your land is not zoned for farm animals
• Needed equipment and general care and milking
• Milk quality

There will also be a demonstration on how to collect milk in a safe and sanitary way and wrap up with a question and answer session. The cost is $20/group and are held on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. To schedule a class or for more information, contact Josh at 801-452-5224!

Want to know more right now? Check out Josh's YouTube video about how to construct a milking stand for goats!

Photo Credit

Don't Miss Wasatch Community Gardens' Plant Sale!

The Plant Sale features a wide range of unique, flavorful, heirloom vegetable, flower and herb seedlings you can’t find anywhere else. Gardeners both new and experienced are invited to support Wasatch Community Gardens and purchase a variety of delicious tomato seedlings to savor fruit straight from the vine this summer. Along with the heirloom tomatoes and unique vegetable varieties you've come to expect, a large collection of edible perennials like grapes, berries, and herbs, as well as drought tolerant and Utah native landscape plants will also be available. Please click on the links below to see a full list of plants that will be available for sale and start dreaming:

Vegetable Plant List

Annual Flower Plant List

Perennial Plant List

So check it out!

The plant sale is:

Saturday, May 8 from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm at
Rowland Hall 720 South Guardsman Way (1580 East)

Cork Recycling

Wondering what to do with all of your corks? USEE Institutional Member Momentum Recycling sent out this message a few weeks ago:

Organic grocer Whole Foods Markets has expanded its wine cork recycling program to all of its 292 locations in North America and the U.K. The grocer is working in partnership with Cork ReHarvest, a Salem, Oregon-based cork recycling organization started in 2008.

"Thirteen billion wine corks are produced each year," said Patrick Spencer, director of Cork ReHarvest, in the press release announcing the expansion. "Eight billion of those corks come to the U.S., and 99 percent of them end up in landfills."

The recovered corks will end up in different locations around the U.S., all piggybacking on trucks already en route to each destination, according to the company. West of the Rockies, corks will be processed by Corvallis, Oregon-based Western Pulp into recyclable wine shippers containing 10-percent cork. Corks from the Midwest will be made into cork floor tiles by Yemm & Hart of Marquand, Missouri. For both the East Coast and the U.K., corks will be sent to Jelinek Cork Group and made into various post-consumer cork products.

So save up your corks and recycle them!

Wild About Utah: Blue Orchard Bees

It’s early spring, the time of fruit tree bloom. Apricots, apples, plums, cherries, and pears will all need bees to pollinate their flowers. Traditionally, we’ve used the European honey bee, but now we know how to pollinate our fruit trees using one of our native bees, the blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria). These bees fly nationwide.

In Utah they occupy many foothill and lower montane habitats. They aren’t social; every female is fertile and tends to her own tiny nest. Adults are active and nesting for only 3-4 weeks in the spring. These bees naturally nest in the tunnels chewed by large wood-boring beetles in tree trunks. Each female partitions the tunnel into a series of little bee-sized rooms. Each room is stocked with a bee-sized provision of pollen moistened with nectar, followed by a single egg. Nest cells are partitioned, and ultimately capped, with mud, a trait shared with other so-called “mason bees".

You can have your own backyard population of blue orchard bees. One easy way to start is with a short fat log that is seasoned and dry. Take a 5/16 bit and drill 20 or more holes 5 to 6 inches deep. Stand the log on end, facing the holes towards the southeast.

On cold mornings, females bask in the sun before taking flight. If your log is colonized, then you’ll see steely blue bees busily coming and going all day long during fruit tree bloom. They tote their loads of dry yellow pollen in a brush of hair beneath the abdomen. Unloading that pollen at the nest necessitates some charming acrobatics, part of their undeniable entertainment value. Successive generations will nest for you every spring, but you’ll want to switch to better nesting materials to practice good bee hygiene.

Details and links can be found at our Wild About Utah website.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Pictures: Jim Cane
Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Wild About Utah is a weekly nature series produced by Utah Public Radio in cooperation with Stokes Nature Center and Bridgerland Audubon Society. Archives of the program can be found at www.wildaboututah.org.