December 14, 2023
On December 13th, the JMT Wilderness Conservancy was honored by the U.S. Forest Service with the National Wilderness Award for Wilderness Partnership Champion at a ceremony in Sacramento. Nominated by the Inyo and Sierra National Forests, these awards honor individuals and groups across America for excellence in overall wilderness stewardship, public education, and traditional skills leadership.
Over the past four field seasons, the Conservancy has partnered with the Inyo and Sierra National Forests, two of the five federal units along the John Muir Trail. Together, we implemented landscape-level restoration of heavily degraded terrain affected by high recreational use and severe climate impacts. The work focused on riparian and meadow ecosystems within the 2.8 million acres of the High Sierra that surrounds the JMT.
In 2020, the Conservancy initiated the JMT Internship Program in partnership with Stanford University to work in multiple large project areas to identify sites for restoration. We are now looking forward to our fifth summer field season utilizing undergraduate interns and have expanded to 7 colleges and universities in California and Nevada. The program has been extremely successful at accurately recording vital field data on current environmental conditions and the effectiveness of restoration work as it progresses across the region each year.
Over the winter months, this data is distributed to the leadership of all federal agencies involved in the management of the JMT, including the Inyo and Sierra National Forests. It will be used to design the necessary restoration and monitoring strategies as adapted to seasonal impacts. Through this program, our undergraduate research interns, whom we train for technical, safety, and survival skills, have the chance to work with USFS rangers and scientists on a major environmental effort while building their own leadership skills.
Through this collaboration and our growing JMT Internship Program, the JMT Wilderness Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service are able to achieve broad restoration goals across the region.
We are inspired by this award and the work that lies ahead!
