Lumber Learning

Lumber Learning is an educational program that provides schools with experiential opportunities at the park and lumber harvested from its forest. The program supports learning about forestry, natural resource management, and the trades. Students learn about forest stewardship from ‘seed to board’ at one of the only National Park Service units practicing active forestry.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP is one of the oldest professionally managed forests in the United States. It is also the only national park that actively cuts down trees to manage the forest. The park illustrates how forest management has changed over time and acts as a model for how to take care of forests today. This means that the park works to keep the forest healthy and prepares for impacts and stressors associated with climate change including pests, diseases, and invasive plants. In this program, the forest is your classroom. It can be adapted for various age groups and areas of study.

 

Program Elements

 

NPS/Kent McFarland

Horse Logging in Action

Visit the park during the fall when annual horse logging operations are taking place to learn about this forest management practice. Horse logging can be a sustainable form of forestry that emphasizes forest health over speed and volume.

As part of the field trip, school groups explore active management practices with park natural resource staff. Groups witness trees being felled at an active logging site in support of the park's Forest Management Plan. Staff explain how they determine trees for logging based upon structural integrity, overall health, and those that are experiencing current climate change stressors such as forest pests. Professional loggers then demonstrate directional felling to ensure safety and minimal damange to surrounding trees. Loggers and park staff determine the best use of the felled trees and cut the timber to specific lengths for boards or firewood. Next, a single hose or team skids the logs to a machine, or 'forwarder', that picks up the logs and delivers them to a truck waiting at a landing.

Horses are a low impact logging tool that can move through very small and narrow spaces in the forest and prevent the need to fell additional trees to create logging roads. When used properly, these “living tools” produce far less soil compaction compared to heavy machines used in forestry. Today, horse logging is used at the park to keep the forest ecosystem healthy and to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Students can ask foresters and loggers questions, meet draft horses, and learn about careers in forestry.

School groups will be visiting an active logging site. There are potential risks and hazards associated with this. There will be loud chainsaws, large equipment and animals, and potentially falling or rolling logs and branches. Please ensure your group understand the importance of listening to park staff, staying within safe viewing areas, and following directions during their visit.

 

Supporting Shop Class

Classes can take lumber that was cut during past horse logging operations back to their classroom for hands-on projects. The logs are milled into boards at the park during the annual Forest Festival and dried on property (in bunks or a solar kiln) for about a year.

 

So as we learn more about logging, it's opening all of our minds to new experiences and new things. Because so many people don't know about any of this. And as we learn, we can share with other people. And this gives us so many ideas about job opportunities. And it's just opening our minds and helping us open other people's minds.

—Student participant in Lumber Learning

 

How to Participate

The Lumber Learning program is a unique opportunity for teachers and students to have a place-based connection to forests and the importance of managing forested ecosystems in the face of climate change. To learn more about participating, email the park's education coordinator.