Recently I had the opportunity to work for a day with high school students who are engaged in a unique citizen science program, called the Youth Forest Monitoring Program, or YFMP for short. This conservation education program employs students in a 7-week summer internship. The students receive specialized training by Forest Service employees, collect data throughout the summer, analyze their data, and finally present their findings to peers, parents and Forest Service employees at the end of the program. The students receive a stipend, valuable work experience, as well as insight into the jobs performed by a variety of forest service professionals including archaeology, hydrology, soil science, fisheries, and forestry. The program has been around for 25 years and is the only program of its kind in the country. The YFMP program is run by Liz Burke, who is a Conservation Education specialist with the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. I recently learned that several past participants in this program have gone on to become full time employees in the Forest Service, including the current Helena-Lewis and Clark Fire Management Officer, Soil Scientist, and a Hydrology Technician in the nearby regional office.

On the day we worked with YFMP, my supervisor and I met with the YFMP “stream team” and worked on several activities at the location of a habitat restoration project that was completed in 2022. This site has been monitored by YFMP students for many years, and is of particular interest because it was monitored before, and after the habitat restoration occurred. We electrofished a length of the stream within the restoration project, capturing, identifying, measuring, and weighing the fish that were caught. Afterwards, the YFMP crew collected and categorized aquatic invertebrates, took hydrologic measurements of the stream, and helped with groundwater monitoring in the floodplain.

While I only participated for one day with the program this summer, it was a fun change of pace and more importantly it is a very cool program that I would like to see more available to young adults around the country. There is no better way to show students what possible career paths await them than to have them experience and perform parts of those jobs. Furthermore, engaging young adults in ecological monitoring and science is more important than ever, in order to show them possible career paths, and to foster a conservation ethic in the next generation of people who will work in natural resource management.