Hat Creek Youth Initiative

Student Blog Post: Lincoln Granillo

My name is Lincoln Granillo and I am 19 years old. I graduated from Fall River High School this past June. My interests are back breaking work like construction or farm work. In my free time, I play video games with my family members. The reason I joined the Hat Creek restoration project was because I needed a job and I wanted to try something new. I avoided using my brain in school, so I wanted to show that I could use it if I need to. My favorite activity this summer was the LWD inventory, or Large Woody Debris inventory, because the water kept me cool when I was working.

 LWD inventory is where we collect data on all logs in or above the water. We use a cloth tape measure to get the diameter and total length. We also established if it was a log or rootwad (a rootwad is the tree's root system). We needed to tell if the tree was unstable, pinned, ramped, or bridged. We also had to tell the orientation of the log like parallel, perpendicular, down, or upstream and the decay of the log. All this information was needed to tell the lifespan of each log in the stream. For example, a log that is ramped will probably be there longer than an unstable log.

Thanks to the knowledgeable Jeff Cook. He told us what a log was according to LWD inventory standards. This made it easier, so that not a whole lot of time was wasted on measuring every stick and log in the stream. Before we did LWD, I thought the log just made the stream ugly. Now I see logs are important, but we need to find a middle ground between an idealistic setting of clear clean water with fish everywhere and between a log providing habitat and spawning grounds for fish. Logs are important ecologically in two very big ways. One which is very important to the restoration project is fish habitat. Logs provide cover for fish from predators. The other would be to increase increase the speed of the water in the thalweg so that the sediment slug get pushed out of the water system faster. The sediment slug is bad because fish do not lay eggs in silt and there are few bugs that live in silt for the fish to eat.

This job has been a good experience. One, to myself to prove that I can process information and two, my field boss, Colby Tucker, is a cool dude because he gives me some responsibility. It is a good thing he is around my age because he can relate me. Meeting new co-workers and being able to successfully work in a group has been a rewarding experience.

Thanks, 

Lincoln Granillo

P.S. Keep reading the blog to find out about what the group is doing next!

USFS Career and Professional Development Day

Hat Creek Youth Initiative - 
Student Blog Post: Dylan Spooner

My name is Dylan Spooner and I going into my senior year at Burney High School, and I enjoy playing footballs and participating in Kinetics. I wanted to do the Hat Creek Youth Initiative because I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about the area that I live in. My favorite thing I’ve participated in so far this summer is the photo-point monitoring. 

I’m going to write my blog about the career and professional development day we had on July 15^th at the USFS Hat Creek Ranger District Office. The first thing I learned about that day, was the importance of being detailed in my resume. There were great speakers such as Kit Mullen, Allison Jackson, Naomi Brown from the United States Forest Service, that gave us firsthand knowledge about what they are looking for in a resume. We even had one-on-one time to improve our resumes that we used to apply for the Hat Creek Youth Initiative. We also had the speakers talk about how to write a cover letter, and how to have a good interview. 

In the afternoon, we had Jim Ostrowski from the College of the Siskiyous come and speak to us about the many career and education opportunities in Natural Resource Conservation. He described the Natural Resources program at College of the Siskiyous that many students participate in to obtain a degree. 

We had Naomi Brown explain to us the ease of setting up an account on USAJobs. This program allows many people to easily apply for government jobs across the nation. This website is a great opportunity for me because in the future I have easy access to look for a job I would be interested in applying for. One job I’m interested in that I learned about is working with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) because I like working with computers. 

Overall, I thought this Career and Professional Development Day was very helpful and a great experience for me. I gained knowledge about writing resumes, cover letters and having interviews. I got to speak with important members of the USFS such as the District Ranger Kit Mullen, Allison Jackson and Naomi Brown. I feel that this opportunity has given me a great advantage in applying for jobs in the future. 

Thanks, 

Dylan Spooner

A huge thank-you goes out to the USFS Hat Creek Ranger District Office for hosting this career day for the Hat Creek Youth Initiative. We would also like to thank Jim Ostrowski from College of the Sikisyous for his time and great information. We look forward to another successful career day next year!

Student Blog Post - Clay Brock

Student Blog Post- Hat Creek Youth Initiative 

Hi my name is Clay Brock and I’m going into Grade 12 at Fall River Junior and Senior High School. I’ve played three years of basketball at the high school and I’m going to play my first year of high school baseball this year. I decided to participate in the Hat Creek Youth Initiative because I felt like it was a good opportunity, and it could help me further down the road. I’m interested in Forestry as a career potentially, and thought doing this program would help on my resume.

One of the first things that we talked about when I first started my job with CalTrout was photo-point monitoring. Photo-point monitoring is simply a before-and-after picture of the work that is going to be done on Hat Creek. The first thing as a group that we did, is that we all collaborated to determine a reasonable layout to plot each photo-point location…which took quite some time. Then after we all had agreed on the photo-point locations we took our plan to the field. We began taking pictures from the Carbon Parking lot on Hat Creek to the 299 Bridge on both sides of the stream-bank.  We organized the pictures based upon the different restoration features we wanted to capture, such as the future bridge, trails, and planting locations. Then after we took around 50-60 photo-points we felt like we had gotten enough before pictures for the project.

After photo-point monitoring, we were introduced to a new task where we took slope and stream-bank measurements along the banks. I found out that this new task was a lot of physical labor, walking up and down the slope, and therefore was one of my favorite tasks so far. Our Crew Leader taught us how to use a clinometer to take slope measurements, and a GPS unit to take exact GPS points. I learned that Foresters use clinometers in their work a lot so I liked that I got to learn how to use one. I feel that as a group we can get any task done that is given to us and that we work well as a team. 

I’m looking forward our next tasks, especially the forest and vegetation inventory. I also am excited to go on the forestry tour later in the summer.

Thanks, 

Clay Brock

Hat Creek Youth Initiative Underway

  

California Trout is pleased to announce that the inaugural year of the Hat Creek Youth Initiative is underway. The Hat Creek Youth Initiative (HCYI), developed by California Trout, and supported with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (nfwf.org), was designed to engage local youth in the restoration of Hat Creek. Through paid employment, students from the Fall River Joint Unified School District, will receive meaningful natural resource mentorship from resource professionals, and tangible conservation job-readiness skills.  The HCYI will also engage youth in a meaningful and hands-on conservation project that is going on in their own back yard: the restoration of the Hat Creek Wild Trout Area in North-east California.  Students this summer will be completing important pre-project monitoring and baseline studies that will help researchers and California Trout in the restoration plan for Hat Creek. The six students from the Fall River Unified School District and their Crew Leader, have completed two weeks of work so far this summer. Read on to find out what the HCYI is up to!

Week 1:

Students spent their first week of work completing a Training Week.  Students had office training time at the Lions Club in Fall River Mills where they learned about: the history of California Trout as an organization, watersheds, the basics of stream-bank restoration, the riparian corridor, and the ecology of the Hat Creek area. The week was an amazing opportunity for the students to engage with the extremely knowledgeable natural resource professionals that live in the Burney/Fall River Mills and Hat Creek area.


Our first guest speakers were from the Pit River Tribe, where elders Bill George and Cecilia spoke to the youth about the cultural significance of Hat Creek. We learned about Cultural Monitoring, Cultural uses of plants, and about the importance of Hat Creek culturally and historically.

Our next speaker was Todd Sloat, the Watershed Coordinator with the Fall River Resource Conservation District. Todd is an active member of the Hat Regional Advisory Committee, which is a technical board that advises and provides scientific feedback about the Restoration of Hat Creek. Todd spoke to the youth about previous stream-bank revetment at Hat Creek; how to remember the difference between Sedges/Grasses/Rushes; and the path he took in his career to get where he is today. As the football coach for many of the kids, it was great for the students to hear what he does in his day job!



On the Wednesday of the first training week, we had a great chat from Claude Singleton, who is the Recreation Planner for the Bureau of Land Management. Claude spoke to the youth about the varied careers and pathways that one can take in the Natural Resource fields. As Claude pointed out, it takes all types of people from office managers; computer specialists; foresters; recreation planners; biologists; firefighters, engineers, and the list goes on. With Claude's extensive local knowledge from working with the BLM in the area, the students were able to learn about a lot of the different projects that the BLM does, as well as his own career pathway that led him to where he is today.

 

Students reading their Training Manuals at Hat Creek

Our last day of the training week brought out field training with Jeff Cook, the principal of Spring Rivers Ecological Sciences, and an extremely knowledgeable researcher of the Hat Creek and spring-fed creek systems. Jeff's talk brought the students along the right side of the stream, where we learned about the aquatic vegetation in Hat Creek and the role it plays in the food-web for macro-invertebrates and fish. Jeff also spoke about the geology of Hat Creek; and shared with the group how biologists complete mark-recapture studies with turtles and other animals.

Our last speaker was Kit Mullen, the District Ranger for the Hat Creek Ranger District of the USFS. Kit's talk was incredibly informative, and the stories from her travels and work all over the country was definitely a highlight of the week. Kit shared the history of the USFS, fire-ecology, timber in the area, and her many stories from working in Alaska as a back-country hunting guide...wow! We all can't wait for Kit to come back out this summer to do some hands-on learning with the group, and to hear some more stories.

A huge thanks to all of our guest speakers that we've had so far, and stay tuned for more information about the work being done by the 2013 Hat Creek Youth Initiative!