Working Hard in Colorado

One of the perks of my job is getting to travel. This year's annual Project WILD Coordinator's conference happend to be in Estes Park, Colorado right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a lot of work helping to plan and prepare for the conference, as well as, making sure that everything ran smoothly throughout the entire week.

Everyone in my office came along. Including our executive director, Josetta Hawthorne.

We took several half day field trips to RMNP during the week. We heard talks from park rangers about fire management, elk population control, and climate change and the effects it is having on wildlife habitat and populations in the park.

The talk that I found most interesting was the discussion about Mountain Pine Beetles and how they are researching and working to control the damage that they are doing to forests. We had similar problems with Southern Pine Beetles in Florida. They bore into the pine trees to the point that the tree is overwhelmed by the destruction that the beetles cause to their vascular system and dies. This creates huge stands of dead trees. One method they are trying is cutting down the dead trees and burning them in a machine like the one pictured above. This hopefully kills any beetles that are in the process of reproducing in that tree and prevents them from infecting any other healthy trees nearby.

I stopped for a picture in the Alluvial Fan with some of my co-workers.

(L to R) Lanese, Maricella, and Grace.

I also got to catch up with Lori Haynes. She is the Project WILD State Coordinator in Florida. I was one of her facilitators when I worked at Pine Jog.

This was the view from our hotel. We held all the meetings at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Yes, this is the hotel where Stephen King wrote "The Shining." The movie version, starring Jack Nicholson, played continuously on channel 42....kinda creepy!

Besides comittee meetings and field trips we also took time to share updates and suggestions for several of the Project WILD activities. Marc, who also works in my office, is trying out an activity involving spiders made out of pipe cleaners....what will environmental educators think of next!

Overall, not a bad week at work. Next year, we head to Portland, Oregon.

Too bad this only happens once a year!