First Forestry Club Meeting of 2011

Hello everyone,

I wanted to send everyone a copy of the minutes of the meeting we had today. 

Forestry Club Meeting 1/21/11

The Allegheny Winter SAF Meeting will be on February 16, 2011. Mont Alto will be sending four students to participate in the quiz bowl event. There will be try outs to see who will be participating in the quiz bowl. They will be held January 28th at 12:00 in 211 Sci/Tech. If anyone missed the meeting and would like to try out please let me know. These will be the people participating in the tryouts: Tyler, Chelsea, Nick, Andy T., Mark, Connor, Shane, Adam, Zach, Mike H., Mitch, and Mike T.

There will be a Klondike Derby on Saturday February 26th in Newville for the Boy Scouts of America. We will be helping with the events. The following people will be participating: Mike H., Mark, Andy T., Andy G., Connor, James, Mike T., Shane, Nick, Tyler, Seth, Mitch, and Adam. If you would like to participate and were not there, please let me know.

On Wednesday February 2nd at 6:30 the Forestry Club will be going to Whitetail Ski Resort to go tubing. There will be a sign up sheet outside of Mr. Houghton's office in Sci/Tech.

On March 19th we would like to go to the State museum and look at historic logging and forestry photographs. If we go on the third Saturday of the month, it will be free entry. I will put a sign up sheet outside of Mr. Houghton's office to see if we have anybody that wants to go.

We also would like to make T-shirts for the Forestry Club. Members are allowed to make their own ideas for shirts and bring them to the nest meeting so we can vote for the shirt we would like to make. The ideas for shirts will be due on February 4th (The next meeting). 

Tyler also suggested that we could watch one of the prescribed burns at Fort Indiantown Gap. We will have more details on this later.

The next meeting will be on Friday February 4th at 12:00 in the Weistling Student Center. 

Respectfully submitted by
Your Forestry Club Secretary,
Zachary Hetrick

Mountain Lions in Pennsylvania

On Thursday, November 18, the Forestry Club hosted Tuscarora District Forester Gene Odato for a fascinating presentation on the existence of mountain lions in Pennsylvania. Gene has collected photos and prints that point to the likelihood that the big cats are here among us. The presentation and pizza dinner was sponsored by the Tau Phi Delta fraternity.

Tau Phi Delta brothers introduced Gene and gave a brief overview of fraternity life at State College for the Mont Alto foresters.

We want lions!

Gene Odato

Click here to see links to mountain lion information.

VA Update: May 19

After days of not getting whimbrel in front of our traps, we finally figured out where they prefer to land for roosting during the current heights and times of high tide. Today we set up one trap at a close location to Box Tree Dock where we had seen a few whimbrel land; one trap in a high marsh area where we had seen tons of whimbrel land; and a third trap in another high marsh area where they love to land during really high tides. Throughout the morning we didnt have much action, but a pair of gull-billed terns provided entertainment.

gull-billed terns

Around 3:30pm, we had about 35 whimbrel land near one of the high marsh trap sites, but they landed out of reach of our nets and never walked in close enough for a shot before they flew. Around 4:30pm we saw birds headed for our second high marsh trap site and Fletcher, Anna, and I tookt he boat in for a closer look. It looked like some birds had landed in our trap zone, so Fletcher and Anna dropped me off at the end of the blasting wire while they took the boat around for a better angle to see the trap zone from. A few minutes later, Fletcher called me on the radio to say that it looked like 5 birds would be caught by the trap, so I charged and fired the net and we raced over in the boat, ran the 100 meters to the net, and found 3 whimbrel safely trapped uner it. We had the birds extracted within minutes and headed back to the dock. We could tell as soon as we saw the trapped birds, that we had three fat female whimbrel. This is exactly what we wanted so we could start putting satellite transmitters on them, which will track their migration northward. If they prove to be the western subspecies (Numenius phaeopus rufiventris), it will migrate from here to Alaska to breed, having already come from Brazil or another Northeastern South American country. The three birds we caught today weighed 630 grams, 555 grams, and 620 grams. The two larger birds are most likely the 3rd and 4th largest whimbrels ever banded, respectfully. The two birds over 600 grams are most likely of the western subspecies.

The first whimbrel we banded today; a large 630 gram potential female, with an unusually short bill for its size.Close-up of the 630 gram whimbrel.

Close-up of the radio transmitter we attached. These transmitters are solar powered.Whimbrel before released; note satellite transmitter.

Anna with one of the three whimbrel before releasing.

Close-up of another of the three whimbrel.
The three whimbrel being released with green Alpha-numeric tag, yellow Virginia band, USGS metal band, and satellite transmitters on all of them!

Hopefully tomorow will be just as productive and we can get some more birds banded and given radio or satellite transmitters!

Visiting a Timber Harvesting Operation

 

 

 

 

On April 23, consulting forester Mike Waldron showed forestry club members a thinning operation at the Little King's Gap Hunting Club. Designed to create a wildlife opening to attract deer, to earn some income, and to prepare the site for natural regeneration, the planning of the harvest presented many options to consider. Thanks, Mike, for an interesting discussion and visit!

Below is a map of the timber harvest location. Located adjacent to Kings Gap State Park, the hunting club is near farm fields and not far from new housing developments. There shouldn't be any trouble attracting many deer.


View Visit to hunting club in a larger map

During April, Penn State Forestry Students planted American chestnut and various species of hickories on a fenced plot of land on Waynesboro Reservior property in South Mountain, PA. Here are a few photos taken by Alex Lamoreaux during one of the planting days....

Academic Festival 2010

Forestry students were well represented in the Penn State Mont Alto Academic Festival on April 14th. Click on the pictures to see a description of each project. The projects ranged from aspen regeneration to forest type mapping. The students are getting quite skillful with GIS to map their work.

April Events

At today's (March 23) meeting of the Forestry Club we decided on the following events:

• April 23 -- There will be an afternoon field trip to a hunting club property near King's Gap State Park followed by pizza!
• April 24 -- We will lead tree walks in the campus arboretum for children attending the Pediatric Fair.
• April 24 -- We will have an informational table for the Earth Day celebration at Caledonia State Park. This will only take two people.
• April 25 -- We will volunteer for tree shelter removal in the state forest plantation near Sand Rd.