NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

A recent collaboration between the Forest Service and a crew of prison inmates has salvaged a nearly 70-year-old piece of the agency’s past.

Almost 70 years ago, in 1934, members of the Forest Service-administered Civilian Conservation Corps used a thousand loads of lumber, carried up the mountain by packhorses, to build the Black Butte Fire Lookout Tower on a peak 6,400 feet high located on the Deschutes National Forest in the Cascade Mountains in central Oregon. But in 2001 the 67-year-old historic tower collapsed under a load of snow and ice--and it has been a public safety hazard since then.

“Despite the appearance of the wreckage,” said Kirk Metzger, FS’s assistant fire management officer based in Sisters, Ore., with the Sisters Ranger District on the Deschutes National Forest, “we were hoping that there might be significant items, within the debris, that could be salvaged and then used for lookout tower restoration projects.”

One problem, he advised, was a lack of human and financial resources available to tackle this salvage project. So in 2002 the Sisters Ranger District applied for a grant from the Samuel S. Johnson Foundation of Redmond, Ore., to fund the sorting, salvaging, and assessment of old growth lumber and metal hardware from the ruins. They received a grant for $5,000 later that year.

FS’s Kirk Metzger (center) carefully examines a stand that normally holds a ‘fire finder’ device, as he assesses its salvageability. That item was part of the debris from the nearly 70-year-old Black Butte Fire Lookout Tower, located on the eschutes National Forest in central Oregon, which collapsed under a load of snow and ice in 2001. Forest Service staffers recently teamed up with a crew of prison inmates to salvage portions of the debris, for use in lookout tower restoration projects. --Photo by Maret Pajutee

The Cascades Mountain Range in the background certainly offers an enjoyably distracting view--but members of a work crew are concentrating on salvaging items from the wreckage of the nearly 70-year-old Black Butte Fire Lookout Tower on the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. --Photo by Maret Pajutee

While located only about 200 yards away from the new Black Butte Fire Lookout Tower (right, background), several members of a work crew (right) pull on a cable in order to dislodge several beams from the wreckage of the old Black Butte Fire Lookout Tower--which is located on the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon and which, after nearly 70 years, collapsed under a load of snow and ice in 2001. Forest Service staffers and a crew of prison inmates recently sorted, salvaged, and assessed items of debris from the wreckage, as they looked for materials to be used in lookout tower restoration projects. --Photo by Maret Pajutee

Then Dave Moyer, an FS silviculture operations specialist on the Sisters Ranger District, came up with the idea of using inmates from the Oregon Department of Corrections Work Program to provide the physical labor for the project. “That’s one of the purposes of this particular inmate work program--and the inmates like getting outdoors,” he explained.

Prison officials agreed with Moyer’s idea, so this past June a 20-person inmate crew--led by Metzger and Dennis Benhower, an FS forestry specialist on the Sisters Ranger District, plus accompanied by two prison guards--hiked the steep two-mile trail to the site of the fallen fire lookout tower.

“It really was a mass of twisted wreckage,” said Maret Pajutee, an FS ecologist on the Sisters Ranger District who authored the grant that funded the salvage project.

But the work crew methodically tackled the ruins. “In fact,” she emphasized, “they made quick work of sorting that jumble of twisted wood, wire cables, and broken glass.”

Under the direction of Metzger, some of the crew carefully unscrewed old bolts that were frozen in the old wooden beams and protected by unusual, large wood gaskets. Others picked out and extracted intact support beams, piled up burnable debris, picked up glass, and rolled into coils the hundreds of feet of heavy metal cable that once held the tower steady against the wind.

Five hours after they had arrived on the mountaintop, the disarray of debris had been reconfigured into neat stacks of salvageable beams, burn piles, metal hardware, and lookout parts.

“Crew members found fifteen massive wooden beams that had been milled years ago out of old-growth trees,” Pajutee pointed out. They also located five intact wooden staircases--each one 15 to 20 feet long--plus the wooden floor of the lookout cab, with the stand that holds the ‘fire finder’ device still attached to it. Metzger estimated that the crew also salvaged nearly 500 pounds of metal hardware, including unusual hand-forged chafing plates which protected the tower beams from the thick metal cable.

A month later the salvageable metal items were helicoptered off the mountaintop--done as part of a fire lookout tower supply flight. Those items are currently being catalogued by an FS volunteer on the Sisters Ranger District. Pajutee said that the salvageable wooden beams await removal off the mountaintop through a possible additional grant.

Metzger observed that, despite the difficult hike to the top--with heavy loads of tools including chainsaws, plus the challenging task itself--the work crew was in high spirits and glad to be of service. “I love the mountains. Anything I can do to help mountains--I do it,” declared crew member Bobby Rose of Vancouver, Wash.

Pajutee said that the next steps for the salvage project involve continuing discussions with staff from the High Desert Museum, in Bend Ore., to include some of the salvaged items in a 1930s-era Forest Service exhibit currently being planned in the museum. News of the salvaged finds will be advertised through ‘lookout restoration networks’ for use in reconstructing old lookout towers. •

RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND ECONOMICS

Recruiting top-level research scientists to the federal government has never been easy--partly because of lower government pay levels and higher levels of “red tape” during the hiring process. So the problem has been: How can the government lure the best research scientists to government work?

The answer may lie in a new program authorized in the 2002 Farm Bill. The program, called the “Senior Scientific Research Service” or SSRS, gives USDA power to hire as many as 100 senior-level research scientists, at any one time, for the Agricultural Research Service, the Forest Service, and the Economic Research Service through a streamlined process and at higher pay than was previously offered for senior research scientists.

A team of USDA human resources specialists was assembled in May 2002 to bring the program to fruition, including developing the procedures for managing the program, to include hiring the new positions. The 10-person team was co-chaired by Ray Leaman, associate deputy administrator for administrative and financial management in the Research, Education, and Economics mission area, and Liz Daly who, until her retirement in July 2003, was a personnel management specialist in the Office of Human Resources Management.

Leaman explained that, for a research scientist to be eligible for a Senior Scientific Research Service position, three general requirements are paramount. First, the research scientist must have conducted “outstanding” research--as judged by scientific peers--in the fields of agriculture or forestry. Second, the research scientist must have earned a Ph.D. degree. Third, the research scientist must meet federal government qualification standards for appointment to a GS-15 level position. The individual must then be recommended by the administrator of the agency--ARS, FS, or ERS--doing the hiring, and then approved by Secretary Ann M. Veneman.

As job openings are being identified and approved for hiring under the standards of this new program, the appropriate human resources offices will use recruiting processes similar to those previously used to hire senior research scientists.

But there are key differences in the new program, according to Harry Baldauf, a personnel management specialist with the REE mission area. “The Senior Scientific Research Service is unique in that slots, advertising, and selection procedures do not require approval of officials or agencies outside the Department,” he noted. “It’s a program wholly owned and operated by and for USDA.” In addition, the application process is streamlined, with a smaller application package required than for Senior Executive Service or General Schedule research positions.

Leaman advised that ARS, FS, and ERS are expected to begin using this hiring authority sometime this fall.

“This new program will ensure that the government can immediately begin attracting the best and brightest research scientists to USDA,” Baldauf affirmed.

“To maintain a top-notch research program, we have to be able to hire top-notch scientists,” Leaman emphasized. “There’s no question that this initiative makes USDA more competitive in recruiting and retaining world-class research scientists.” •