Digging Those Dinosaurs on National Forests, Grasslands

From USDA:

Posted by Robert Westover, U.S. Forest Service, Office of Communication, on January 7, 2015 at 2:00 PM

Young people are made honorary junior paleontologists in the rotunda of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. (Courtesy The Smithsonian Institution)

When most folks think about our grand and beautiful national forests they probably don’t conjure up images of a fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex munching on his morning prey or a gentle Brachiosaurus chewing enough leaves to nearly fell a small forest just to fill her vegetarian stomach.

But millions of years ago this was exactly what was happening on lands that today comprise national forests and grasslands like the Thunder Basin National Grassland.

We know this because fossilized evidence is widespread on many acres managed by the agency. And, according to Forest Service paleontologist Mike Fracasso, lots of people visiting forests and grasslands want to take a piece of this fossilized history home for themselves.

“We generally don’t have an issue with the average visitor to a forest or grassland taking home a small sample or two of a common and abundant plant or animal fossil without a backbone,” said Fracasso.

Because it’s often all about that backbone.

Ancient animals that developed a vertebrae (or backbone) are rarer to find than plants or non-vertebrate animals and fossil bones that, at first glance look isolated, often lead to more complete skeletons. By collecting such fossil bones, a national forest visitor may be unwittingly destroying the fossilized evidence of a full dinosaur skeleton or worse, the only evidence of a creature new to science and yet to be discovered.

It is the job of paleontologists working for all federal land management agencies to educate visitors about the importance of what may or may not be collected from federal lands. To emphasize this educational importance, as well as to recruit young folks into the field of fossil hunting, the National Park Service and Smithsonian Institution sponsored a ceremony on National Fossil Day last fall to recognize a new crop of junior paleontologists.

“These young folks are enthusiastic ambassadors of awareness to the larger community,” said Fracasso. “They’re the ones that will be able to explain to their friends and family why they should be careful about what type of fossils to take off our national lands.”

Even small pieces may lead archeologists to great discoveries.

In Colorado, so many dinosaur fossils were being discovered in a quarry on the Comanche National Grassland that experts referred to the find as a “tossed salad of dinosaur parts.” In 2012, workers found the first Ceratosaurus tooth within the Picket Wire Canyonlands, best known for a huge dinosaur track site along the bank of Purgatoire River.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth found by Barb Beasley during a 2012 Passport in Time excavation in the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation on the Custer National Forest in South Dakota.

That same year, Forest Service paleontologist Barbara Beasley was leading another crew of 20 volunteers when she found a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth on the Custer National Forest in South Dakota. The rare find is estimated to be 66 million years old.

On the Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming, Passport in Time volunteers unearthed an intact nearly three-foot Triceratops horn.

Passport in Time is a Forest Service volunteer archaeology, paleontology, and historic preservation program. Through this program, students and volunteers get the opportunity to go in the field and work shoulder-to-shoulder with professional Forest Service archaeologists, paleontologists and historians on a wide variety of activities throughout the U.S.

A tooth from a meat-eating Ceratosaurus recovered from the River View Quarry in October 2012. (U.S. Forest Service Photo)

U.S. Forest Service: Responding and Adapting to Wildland Fire

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Tom Harbour, Director of Fire and Aviation Management, U.S. Forest Service, on April 10, 2014 at 1:00 PM

The U.S. Forest Service has burned more than 480 acres in the Flying J Project, an effort on the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona to protect the community of Tusayan. The project is outside the Grand Canyon National Park and represents a small part of a larger effort to use controlled burns on more than 4,500 acres of the forest. So far, nearly 1,900 acres have been treated. (U.S. Forest Service/Holly Krake)

The loss of property and firefighters during wildfires are a reminder of the challenges we face in reducing the risks associated with large, unpredictable wildfires. Climate change, drought, insect infestations, changing land-use patterns, and other factors have contributed to increases in the complexity and in the numbers of wildfires across the United States.

Over the past four decades, some states such as Arizona and Idaho have seen the number of large fires burning each year more than triple. In many other western states, including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wyoming, the number of large fires has doubled, according to a report by Climate Central. Average spring and summer temperatures across 11 Western states have increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, contributing to higher wildfire risks. In Arizona, spring temperatures have warmed faster than any other state in the U.S., rising nearly 1 degree per decade since 1970, which likely played a role in the increasing number of fires in the state.

The U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Interior are responding in part to these real, visible trends by implementing the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. The strategy was developed in conjunction with hundreds of stakeholders across all jurisdictions in response to the Federal Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement Act (FLAME) passed by Congress in 2009.

The strategy identifies the greatest challenges and outlines available opportunities to create resilient landscapes, prevent the loss of lives and property, and respond to wildfires. Although we successfully suppress nearly 98 percent of unwanted wildfires, there is still much work to be done to mitigate the risks posed by the growing number and size of fires. The Cohesive Strategy provides federal, local, and state governments, tribes, and organizations with improved planning and implementation tools for wildland fire management and landscape restoration activities.

The strategy has three goals: to maintain and restore resilient landscapes; create fire-adapted communities; and effectively respond to wildfires. To reach these goals, the Forest Service has used prescribed, or planned, fire and other treatments to reduce hazardous vegetation. In fiscal year 2012, we completed more than 1.2 million acres of prescribed fires and more than 662,000 acres of mechanical treatments.

In addition, to reach the second goal of the Strategy, the California Wildfire Coordinating Group, in collaboration with the Forest Service and many other stakeholders, launched a statewide, interagency wildfire prevention campaign One Less Spark, One Less Wildfire. In response to a rapidly worsening 2013 wildfire season, the campaign based its actions on predicted changes in wildfire threat. Resources were pooled together and utilized to address these rising threats and inform communities throughout the year.

In this time of shrinking resources and rising numbers of wildfires, we will continue to work with our partners and stakeholders to address challenges and meet the goals of the Cohesive Strategy.