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So, I wanted to see if there's any other wildland workers out there, by which I mean any NPS/USFS/BLM/BIA employees, or Corpsmembers from various youth corps.The California Conservation Corp, American Conservation Experience, Arizona Conservation Experience etc etc etc, seriously there's a fuckload of corps. Broadly speaking, Wildland workers do everything that involves landscape management. That is, firefighters (and the HUGE industry associated with that), trail workers, parks aides, scientists, loggers, etc. However, this thread is more intended for those who build trails/do fire supression/work the customer service side of Parks.Additionally, I know some goons here are involved in nature work on the science side via a legit job. I worked for the California Conservation Corps, I can answer some questions about Americorps, but this thread is more focused toward trail work/trail maintenance/fire suppression/natural science nerds. A Festivus Miracle fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jul 29, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2018 04:17
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Suspect Bucket posted:I'm a Park Ranger with my city's Parks and Recreation department, but my job is pretty tame and I'm not really in your 'cool kids wildland bearfighter' club. I unfortunately get stuck in the office and front gate booth a lot. It's chill as heck right now, doing a lot of reading and studying at work, but will pick up a lot during summer. I hear a lot of people in the CCC say "I wanna be a ranger". Can you tell me a little about how you got in your job? And yes, California has its own dune ecosystems that people are a-ok with utterly annihilating in the name of OHVs. We do a lot of work on beaches trying to stabilize dunes. You'd think doing restoration work at beach would be fun but it sucks fatty donger to carry straw bales up the side of a dune face.
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Feb 3, 2018 18:45
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Trauma Dog 3000 posted:I work for the federal agency that kidnaps kids from national parks. What's the story behind this? Fencing trip report: Suuuuuucks. However, working on a beach is pretty beautiful and serves as a distraction from my blister coated hands.
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Feb 7, 2018 21:04
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Kangra posted:I'd love to hear stories about the CCC (or any similar group), specifically trailbuilding. Is there someone who designs them and guides the whole process, or is it something a team does as it goes depending on conditions/terrain? I've never had much direct work with Trail work via the CCC. The vast majority of my trailwork (a grand total of about two miles of actual bench cutting) has been with volunteer groups on the side, and almost of that lead to the creation of some super-questionable trails on the South Yuba river. If you're hiking anywhere in Nevada county and your trail suddenly turns into a giant quicksand pit(or a huge washout), I'm sorry, it was probably me. Most of what I do is tree stuff (felling/bucking/limbing or planting/releasing), but I've also done loads of other projects - 3 months worth of building those ubiquitous wire fences that surround every patch of grass in this country, a very minor amount of disaster response (standing in a parking lot on the Thomas Fire, directing traffic for 14 days), months and months of erosion control, some fire stuff (burn piles mostly, with the exception of one particularly problematic patch of grass), a particularly weird day where we went out and screamed at the National Guard MP trainees to simulate a riot which was an absolute blast. If you're looking for some of dat rock poo poo, Though if you want stupid/weird/astonishing corpsmember stories,  mother of fucks have I got you.
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May 15, 2018 08:33
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What's kind of weird about the CCC is that we're somewhat state-funded, but not enough to actually keep us afloat. The CCC has to seek out contracts with other agencies in order to stay afloat, so a lot of our funding comes from private landowners and public agencies who need bodies. Since Arnold hosed the CCCs and then went off to gently caress his fat maid, the Cs have faced a serious problem in that we are competing directly for contracts with other non-profits: ACE, Conservation Legacy, Americorps (in a weirdly incestuous kind of way that's only possible in the Conservation Corps world), Southwest Conservation Corps, Student Conservation Association, so on and so forth. We also compete for emergency money with other corps - while CalFire will only turn to the CCC to staff their emergency camps during the fire season, outside of the state it's an entirely different world. AZCC, Long Beach CC, Conservation Corps of East Bay, and others compete with the CCC for some of that sweet emergency cash, and we end up going off to do weird poo poo all over the country. This last year, the CCC was present in Texas after Harvey, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands. The year before that, CCC crews demolished and remodeled hurricane damaged homes in Louisiana. An example of a good ol' fashion Americorps loving: The San Luis Obispo center had this weird problem. In 2014, they failed to make their target for contracts. Consequently, the then-center director turned to other sources of funding. So, he approached Americorps to get some of that sweet guaranteed federal money. This resulted in the Save our Sierra's program which I participated in. Unfortunately, by turning to Americorps, the center was forced to neglect their other contractors(ie turn down their contracts). The Center can have a maximum of 5 crews. If 3 are out on spike doing tree poo poo for Americorps, and one is permanently contracted with the NPS in Big Sur, who's going to serve State Parks, CalTrans, DWR, and other state agencies that need unskilled labor? By turning to Americorps, the center was forced to create space for other, also-Americorps-funded conservation corps to step in. So now the new center director is nervously chewing her finger nails until 2019, because ACE is now contracted with Oceano State Park, who used to be one of the centers biggest sponsors. Oops.
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May 15, 2018 08:47
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CA's fire season should hopefully be chiller than it was last year, the worst year literally ever in CA history.
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Jul 9, 2018 05:31
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I'm retarded. From CalFires page:quote:NUMBER OF FIRES AND ACRES: This year is already shaping up to be the new worst fire season literally ever. 
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Aug 7, 2018 03:46
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American Conservation Experience has a number of internships aimed at those who are a little older, have not-exactly-relevant-to-their-passions degrees. Check that poo poo out. I got a bachelors degree in Enviromental Science and it turns out that actually having a career as an Enviromental Scientist is really hard and a super niche thing. I walk powerlines for a living now, and I'm seriously considering going back to school for a Forestry or Rangelands AS degree.
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Jul 18, 2020 05:32
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Also, if you live somewhere rural, there's usually a land trust in desperate need of volunteers for trail work/invasive species removal. Do that enough and you can parlay those skills into something more professional down the road. The skill level required can vary significantly. I've worked with volunteer trail crews doing full on rock work(this is pretty rare) and I've worked with more than a few volunteer trail crews that are simply just trying to cut bench. It's a pretty good way to meet people who can point you in the direction of other jobs. Also, definitely gonna say you gotta be prepared to work seasonal. I decided to take this power line inspecting job primarily because the idea of working seasonal in the face of a nation wide oncoming depression didn't seem like a good idea, but I'm still enchanted with the idea of doing it down the road. People don't get into careers associated with wildlands to make a shitzillion dollars (outside of fire, because those guys make a shitzillion dollars). Though, if you're fit, into travel, relatively single, and love working long rear end hours, being a firefighter is definitely a way to get into this gig. Engine crews and hand crews of contractor/state/federal variety always need people every year., and they're more than prepared to train you if you have no clue what a pulaski is. Just be prepared to show up with your jogging shorts and shoes because running is going to be part of the interview process.
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Jul 18, 2020 07:18
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My experience on CalFire camp support: literally served steak (and I do mean good steak) 9 nights in a row. The veggie lunch is so loving delicious. 24 hour bag lunches stuffed to the brim with packaged pre-cut avocados, waffles, cheese sticks, actual fruit. Then the camp transitioned to USFS management: Breakfast is dogshit (like, sausages cooked into carbon turds), and the veggie lunch was literally a brick of tofu stuffed between two soggy rear end hoggie rolls. Like, there was some poor bastard vegeterian USFS firefighter out there with a 12 hour lunch that consisted of a loving tofu sandwich and some napkins, and he was supposed to cut line with this for nourishment. Camp support in the CCC opened my eyes as to why I never wanted to be a firefighter. But, there's still tooooons of jobs that revolve in the orbit of fire where people make shitzillion dollars. Water tenders, the lowboy haulers, GIS specialists, supply and procurement, Wastewater treatment dudes to name a few. If you really want your eyeballs to pop out of your skull, take a look at the pay of CalFire tanker and helitack pilots.
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Jul 19, 2020 00:24
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My WUI patrol experience: welcome to the land of locked gates, thousand dollar per thirty feet fences, and customers with properties that are a jungle of cedars telling me that any slash left behind was a "major fire hazard". I'm actually starting to like the people who fly Trump flags in their front yard because they don't give a poo poo about what I mark for removal. I offered a guy free wood removal on a 40" DBH oak tree and he turned it down because "Oh, I've got a Stihl 660, I can buck it up". Alright my dude, have fun with that.
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Jul 22, 2020 20:16
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Yeah, I figured that's the reason. You're not gonna trim hedges with a 660, though I did that for a CalTrans project with a 660 once because it was the only working saw we had, and it sucked super loving hard. Sharpening a four ft long chain in the crawl position will give you one sore rear end. All the loggers I've seen working will generally do everything with a 461 or Husqvarna equivalent and have a 660 or 880 sitting in the truck for monster tier falls/getting pinched. Heaving that heavy motherfucker around all day will make you one tired fella. I got to use a Husqvarna 4120 on a project once and after about an hour, I put it down in favor of a way smaller saw. Yeah, it's powerful beyond belief but it's basically a motorcycle motor with a bar on it and it will wear your rear end down.
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Jul 23, 2020 16:56
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It's not littering, it's historical trash! I had a tree get no-worked because it was inside of a
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Jul 27, 2020 19:31
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 12:13 |
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Dude, raptors are Serious Business in my profession. I had a coworker find a dead Northern Spotted owl and basically, it was as though he had actually found a dead body. First thing that showed up was the law enforcement officer. Then the vegetation program manager (my boss's boss's boss), and then finally, the biologist and a FWS biologist showed up to confirm that yes, this is in fact a dead bird that died of natural causes and not the activities of my [major West Coast utility]. So this poor guy had to basically spend his entire shift camping out next to a smelly corpse of a bird as various people rolled through to see the dead bird. The response time was kinda nutty too. I've had trees across lines before and had to wait for 12 hours before the tree crew showed up to address it. It's also kind of annoying because if a bald/golden eagle is out doing their thing on a lake(which is rare in my area but not unheard of), basically any tree work that isn't emergency work within a half mile of the nest is over until the nest is vacated. So you can walk through and do all your listing for work, and it creates this weird cycle of going out to do emergency work over and over because actually just doing the normal routine tree work is verbotten.
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Aug 4, 2020 14:20
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