Stewardship Crew

The skilled, passionate, local workforce that brings our stewardship goals into fruition.

The MARS Stewardship Crew was established in 2018 to support fuels management and forestry health work on lands managed by MARS and by other private and public partners in the region.

This “Fuels, Forestry, and Fire” crew is cross-trained in a wide variety of land management practices, ranging from in-stream restoration to hazard tree removal to prescribed fire implementation. Crewmembers embody the “all lands, all hands” ethos central to MARS’s mission. The crew might be creating a shaded fuel break on the Conboy Lake National Wildlife Refuge one day, reducing hazardous fuels for a small private landowner the next, and supporting a prescribed burn with The Nature Conservancy the day after.

book the stewardship crew

Program contact:
Mitch Noddin
alpha@mtadamsstewards.org

crew employment

Open positions for the Stewardship Crew are typically announced in December, and the crew season runs from March-December.

follow the crew!

@mars_stewardship_crew on Instagram

What’s the Crew Up To?

  • Constructing a Shaded Fuel Break

    In strategic areas near communities in the Mt. Adams region, the Stewardship Crew reduces fuel density, providing wildland firefighters critical locations to suppress wildfires in order to protect lives, structures, and natural resource assets.

  • Restoring Streams with Yakama Nation Fisheries

    To restore critical habitat and stream health, crewmembers help with “low-tech process-based restoration” efforts, such as this Post-Assisted Log Structure (PALS) construction on Blockhouse Creek in partnership with biologists at Yakama Nation Fisheries.

  • On a Prescribed Fire Assignment with The Nature Conservancy

    MARS crewmembers travel across the West for 2-week assignments to support prescribed fire efforts with The Nature Conservancy and US Forest Service.

  • Thinning a Pine-Oak Forest with Columbia Land Trust

    The crew supports both public and private land managers with fuels reduction projects, like this one at Columbia Land Trust’s Bowman Creek Natural Area Preserve, where thinning work helped restore open conditions in a pine-oak forest.

  • Preparing for a Prescribed Burn on the Mt. Adams Community Forest

    The crew preps burn units on the Community Forest by digging fire line, blacklining, setting up water resources, and removing hazard trees.

  • Chipping for Trout Lake Residents

    In partnership with the Fire Adapted Community Trout Lake group, the crew provides free chipping services to 40+ residents each spring in Trout Lake, helping them dispose of slash generated while building “defensible space” around their homes.

  • Promoting Oaks on a State Natural Resources Conservation Area

    The WA Department of Natural Resources enlisted the Stewardship Crew’s help to remove dense conifers and brush to “release” native Oregon white oaks at a site near Husum, WA.

  • Supporting a PBA Burn

    The crew provides important capacity on prescribed burns for small private landowners through the Mt. Adams Prescribed Burn Association.

MARS Saw Program

Mt. Adams Resource Stewards operates a nationally recognized and approved sawyer training and certification program. While the MARS Saw Program can issue the 3 levels of USFS-recognized sawyer certification for chainsaw operations, ideas and principles from other training programs such as Game of Logging, Art of Felling Timber, Worksafe BC and others saw programs are also incorporated to training. The program is designed to build and improve sawyers on five principles: Safety, Discipline, Attitude, Growth Mindset, and Professionalism. Given the wide array of projects and complexities that the Stewardship Crew encounters in the field, MARS strives to develop safe, dynamic, and humble sawyers that can pass on knowledge and skills to the next generation of sawyers.

Featured Project: Oak Restoration on a state Natural Area Preserve

The Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) is a fire-adapted species that has long been characteristic of the Columbia River Gorge. Oaks support over 200 species of wildlife with their acorn crops, microbial and plant associations, and abundant cavities. In the absence of fire, however, many oak-dominated landscapes have become densely overgrown with shade-tolerant conifers.

Mt. Adams Resource Stewards partnered with the Washington Department of Natural Resources to perform “oak release”—that is, removing those young, dense conifers so the remaining oaks have the sunlight and resources they need to thrive. The MARS Stewardship Crew implemented this work from 2022-2023 on DNR-managed sites in both Trout Lake and Husum, WA.

Restoring fire-adapted ecosystems is critical to promote wildlife habitat, create resilient forests, and protect our rural communities from catastrophic wildfire. And it’s a team effort, requiring collaboration across public and private land ownerships.