Organization of Biological Field Stations

• Has strong IM project management and organizational skills
• Has a positive customer service attitude and strong work ethic
• Is a team player who enjoys working with others to accomplish a common goal
• Is a self-starter, enjoys a challenge, and has excellent problem-solving and strategic planning skills
• Has the ability to cope well with changing direction, multiple priorities, and a fast-paced work environment
• Has the ability to work well with diverse groups of people

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED...

For more information, contact Joseph Donnegan, Deputy Program Manager for the Resource Monitoring and Assessment program: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The vacancy announcement, when open, will be posted at the USAJobs website, the U.S. Government's official site for jobs and employment information: http://www.usajobs.opm.gov  

Two Positions:

• Chief Operating Officer
• Chief Conservation and Science Officer

The Catalina Island Conservancy was formed in 1972 to protect and restore the natural and cultural resources of Santa Catalina Island, and to make them available for public recreation, education, and enjoyment. Santa Catalina Island is one of eight islands off the coast of Southern California. As the third largest landmass in the Channel Islands group, Catalina supports a complex Mediterranean ecosystem. Every year, approximately 1 million people visit the island and at least 4,000 are resident year-round.

The Conservancy’s mission is to be a responsible steward of its land through a balance of conservation, education and recreation. Its science, restoration, education and outreach activities can and do serve as a model for the conservation of protected lands worldwide in the context of human use. As a “living laboratory,” Catalina Island
and the restoration work of the Conservancy represent one of the largest, most diverse landscape-level scientific experiments being conducted in community-based conservation in the nation. The Conservancy has a full-time staff of just over 70 individuals, an annual operating budget of approximately $10 million, and an endowment of close to $45 million. As such, it is one of the largest land trusts in California actively engaged in long-term stewardship.

The Conservancy is seeking a Chief Conservation and Science Officer (CCSO) to provide visionary leadership and direction of its integrated ecosystem-based conservation and science programs on Catalina Island. This will include implementation of the Center for Conservation Innovation identified in the Conservancy’s recently completed 20 year master plan, Imagine Catalina. The CCSO will collaborate externally with scientists, educators, academic institutions and other conservation oriented land management organizations as well as internally with colleagues to develop and nurture the leadership and professional capacity of the conservation team. The CCSO will be integral to the development activities of the organization and will be expected to represent the Conservancy in professional organization and to produce publications in professional journals and popular media.

The Chief Operating Officer will lead the Conservancy’s facilities construction, renovation, and maintenance programs, including regulatory agencies interface. The position requires a strong understanding of all the technical components related to construction, renovation, and maintenance projects, including the adoption of green building design principles. Strong capital project management skills are required, as well as being able to communicate effectively about capital projects with the President, Board of Directors, Staff, Island stakeholders, and regulatory agencies.

Candidates must be willing to work and reside on Santa Catalina Island.

Full position details and application instructions

Or contact:
Shelli Herman and Associates, Inc.
Attention: Michele Lyons
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

PETERSHAM, Mass. (October 15, 2012)—In newscasts following intense wind and ice storms, damaged trees stand out: snapped limbs, uprooted trunks, sometimes entire forests blown nearly flat. In the storm’s wake, landowners, municipalities, and state agencies are faced with important financial and environmental decisions.

A new study by Harvard University researchers, soon to be published in the journal Ecology, yields a surprising result for large woodlands: when it comes to the health of forests, native plants, and wildlife, the best management decision may be to do nothing.

Salvage logging is a common response to modern storm events in large woodlands. Acres of downed, leaning, and broken trees are cut and hauled away. Landowners and towns financially recoup with a sale of the damaged timber. Salvage logging was widespread in southern New England following the June 2011 tornadoes and the October 2011 snow storm, and the practice was well documented after the great hurricane of September 1938.

In a salvaged woodland landscape, the forest’s original growth and biodiversity, on which many animals and ecological processes depend, is stripped away. A thickly growing, early-successional forest made up of a few light-loving tree species develops in its place.

But what happens when wind-thrown forests are left to their own devices? The Ecology paper reports on a study initiated in 1990 at the Harvard Forest, in which a team of scientists recreated the impacts of the 1938 hurricane in a 2-acre patch of mature oak forest. Eighty percent of the trees were flattened with a large winch and cable. Half of the trees died within three years, but the scientists left the dead and damaged wood on the ground. In the twenty years since, they’ve monitored everything from soil chemistry to the density of leaves on the trees. What they’ve found is a remarkable story of recovery.

According to David Foster, Director of the Harvard Forest and co-author on the new study, “Leaving a damaged forest intact means the original conditions recover more readily. Forests have been recovering from natural processes like windstorms, fire, and ice for millions of years.  What appears to us as devastation is actually, to a forest, a quite natural and important state of affairs.”

Initially, the Harvard site—just like tornado-ravaged areas of Brimfield State Forest and the McKinstry Brook Wildlife Management Area in Southbridge—was a nearly impassable jumble of downed trees. But surviving, sprouting trees, along with many new seedlings of black birch and red maple – species original to that forest – thrived amidst the dead wood. Audrey Barker Plotkin, lead author on the study, explains, “I was surprised at how strongly surviving trees and seedlings from the original forest came to dominate.”  Although weedy invasive plants initially tried to colonize the area, few persisted for long.

Following the June 2011 tornadoes, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Division of Fisheries and Wildlife pursued this controversial watch-and-wait policy at the McKinstry Brook site, where salvage work will be limited to providing access routes for public safety. Division of Fisheries & Wildlife Forestry Project Leader John Scanlon explains, “As a wildlife agency we made the decision not to salvage the tornado impact area at McKinstry Brook because we saw tremendous potential wildlife habitat benefits in the extensive woody debris, open conditions, and vibrant vegetative response.”

Just a year later, the forest’s resilience is plain. According to Scanlon, “We were impressed at how quickly the impact area was occupied by lush, native vegetation, including sprouts or seedlings of American chestnut, red maple, black cherry, birch, aspen, and oak. And most people don’t realize that our pre-colonial forests contained a lot of downed woody debris that provides important habitat structure for wildlife. It supports everything from invertebrates to salamanders, and black bears love to winter in thick brush piles and forage for insects in rotting logs.” Game species benefit, as well. “White-tailed deer readily foraged and sought protective cover throughout the impact area,” Scanlon reports.

The Harvard Forest scientists point out that windstorms do have undeniable impacts on forests, regardless of human management strategies. Barker-Plotkin notes, “After twenty years, the trees in the hurricane experiment are younger and smaller than those in the surrounding forest, and birches are now more common than oaks,which used to dominate here.” But she adds that many aspects of the regenerating forest—particularly in the soils and forest understory —are almost indistinguishable from their neighbors.

While a range of economic, public safety, and aesthetic reasons compel landowners to salvage storm-damaged trees, Barker-Plotkin suggests that improving forest health should not be one of them. “Although a blown-down forest appears chaotic, it is functioning as a forest and doesn’t need us to clean it up.”

The Harvard Forest, founded in 1907 and located in Petersham, is Harvard University's outdoor laboratory and classroom for ecology and conservation, and a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site funded by the National Science Foundation. Its 3,500 acre property is one of the oldest and most intensively studied research forests in the U.S.  Open to the public year-round, the site includes educational and research facilities, a museum, and recreational trails.

More information can be found at http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu, or Contact: Clarisse Hart, Harvard Forest Outreach Manager

Announcement #: 13504061456

Salary Range: $32,177.60 - $55,016

Online Application  https://www.sites.uidaho.edu/AppTrack/Agency/Applicant/ViewAnnouncement.asp?announcement_no=13504061456

MAJOR FUNCTION:

Working as a research scientist and manager the incumbent is responsible for facilitating and supporting field station research programs performed by faculty and students.

Facilitate and support field station teaching programs, based on qualifications and experience, these could include planning and conducting research, writing proposals, developing and instructing classes and assisting scientists in their research.

Schedule and coordinate field station activities with researchers, teachers, and visitors. Maintain wilderness resource monitoring programs, collecting and analyzing data and samples from those programs.

Represent the field station to federal and state management personnel, researchers, visitors, outfitters, guides, and commercial pilots.

Plan, supervise, and perform maintenance and repair of the site facilities and report facilities problems, activity, and business operations to supervisors.

 Management duties will be shared by two people with joint appointments.

The manager(s) hired to this position would be expected to cohabitate with another person in a remote area in a very small cabin for up to12 months.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• B.S. or B.A. degree in forestry, natural resources, botany, horticulture, or related field as appropriate to the scientific research discipline plus 7+ years of experience in the research discipline or closely related field
• OR M.S degree in related field as appropriate to the scientific research discipline plus 1+ years of experience in the research discipline or closely related field
• OR Ph.D. degree in related field as appropriate to the scientific research discipline

Good knowledge of: research methods; principles of statistics; sampling theory and probability theory.

Experience: writing reports or materials; compiling and analyzing data and drawing conclusions; using software

or spreadsheet software to perform analysis; interpreting and communicating (orally and in writing) material

into information usable by a diverse target audience.

Ability to: secure external grants and contracts; originate, develop, direct and independently complete research

programs; establish collaborative and cooperative scientific relationships.

Some positions may require a valid driver’s license, conduct field research, ability to operate a vehicle, and

background check.

Specific to the position:

Demonstrated ability to: perform skilled construction and maintenance, such as carpentry, electrical, and

plumbing; operate and maintain shop equipment; operate hand and power tools.

Physical ability to: lift and carry up to 50 pounds.

Willingness and ability to: live in a very remote location without regular or frequent contact to the outside

world; cohabitate cooperatively with another person in a very small cabin.

ADDITIONAL DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS:

• Field experience in forestry, fisheries, wildlife, range, and/or wildland recreation

• Teaching experience

• Ability to deal with public in a professional and collegial fashion

• Experience managing a remote facility.

• Experience handling and feeding horses and/or mules

• Experience packing with livestock on remote trails

To enrich education through diversity, the University of Idaho is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action

Employer.