Wildlands Volunteer Corps

Winner of the Forest Service Chief's Youth Volunteer Award - 2000

The Wildlands Volunteer Corps (WVC) recruits high-school aged volunteers from Montana to help with NwC's field work in the Swan Valley and surrounding wildlands. Since 1999, over 70 WVC crew members have contributed nearly 500 days in the field on behalf of public lands and natural resources in western Montana.  In the summer of 2003 alone, WVC work efforts amounted to nearly $10,000 worth of volunteer labor for the US Forest Service. The WVC celebrates the following milestones, achieved over the past five years:

• Surveying over 300 miles of USFS roads for fish passage barriers and erosion problems
   
• Monitoring 50 miles of trail in the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area and Rock Creek drainage for noxious weed infestations
   
• Sampling 90 different ponds in the Swan Valley for amphibians and reptiles of special concern to biologists
   
• Monitoring four ponds intensively to gather data on deformity rates in spotted frog populations
   
• Searching the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range for ungulate carcasses to establish causes of mortality for a long-term Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks study
   
• Surveying 18 miles of transects on snowshoes for the presence of furbearers including marten, fisher, wolverine and lynx in the Swan Valley
   
• Establishing permanently monumented cross-sections, and gathering stability data, on 3 different Swan River tributaries for long-term erosion monitoring
   
• Hiking 35 miles of Swan Valley roads and trails to locate grizzly bear tracks for a long-term study of habitat use and bear abundance
   
• Planting 9000 seedlings along a Blackfoot River tributary for a riparian restoration initiative

• Planting 2000 whitebark pine seedlings in the Jewel Basin area in cooperation with a USFS initiative to restore whitebark pine forests

Resident Trackers

Local residents can join a team of volunteers who document their animal track sightings while out working or recreating.  This data is then mapped by NwC staff and provided to the Forest Service and other land management agencies.  These volunteers are required to take one of our animal tracking clinics.