KAMIAH, Idaho, December 4, 2023—Have you ever wanted to escape into the wilderness? What if you could get 30 miles away from the nearest road and hundreds of miles from the nearest cellular service? If so, you’d probably jealous of the Wilderness Rangers, a group of summer interns who perform vital work in two wilderness areas in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests.
“The nice thing about wilderness trail work is that it doesn’t change too much over the years due to the same tools and once you find what works, you just have to fine tune your operations” Josh Page of the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation (SBFC) explained. For the past 14 years, the SBFC has been sending Wilderness Ranger Fellows into the Frank Church River Of No Return and Selway-Bitterroot wildernesses in our forests to enhance access to the wilderness. This program provides a unique opportunity for public service.
Josh knows the deep impact of this work because he’s done it himself, having served as a Wilderness Fellows leader in 2018. “It’s nice when people who apply for the Wilderness Fellows have a wilderness specific degree or focus in their studies, but we do hard work in beautiful places and more than anything, we want people motivated by passion for this work and learning opportunities. Being based in Missoula, I know people can make as much money working in fast food, but if you want to learn about and be immersed in wilderness, we offer that opportunity to remove yourself from modernity.”
SBFC Executive Director, Ryan Ghelfi explained that: “The program lasts 14 weeks and it is designed to last during the college break but you don’t have to be a college student; we recruit veterans, and people from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages. Fellows learn a ton of skills and get to learn wilderness values by living 8 or 9 days out of a backpack as they use traditional tools and hone their skills. We try and get valuable work done for the forest while providing a meaningful experience for students. We hire older people and veterans as well.” It is a volunteer/internship program, so participants receive housing, food, and a modest stipend, and yet it has only grown over the years, from 4 initial fellows to a cohort of 12 annual participants working on four different National Forests, demonstrating that the opportunity to live and work in wild places is an incredibly attractive fringe benefit.
Ryan summarized the SBFC’s total impact this year: “We worked 330 miles of trail including volunteers, experienced staff, and wilderness rangers as workers. 108 people worked on the Nez Perce-Clearwater. We also monitored 110 campsites. There are lots of wilderness campsites where we need to study the impact of wilderness campgrounds. Our fellows climbed deep into the backcountry, climbing over hundreds of trees to reach these places.”
A major highlight of the season for Josh was a trip one crew took to Fish Lake: “We got to do a mini-immersion with our crew out of Fish Lake. They did a hitch out of Fish Lake and then took their days off at Fish Lake so they got days off to experience the wilderness off the clock. They spent a total of 21 days in the wilderness. At one point, the crew was 30 miles in from a road.” Are you interested in this sort of unforgettable experience? If so, applications went live on December 1! Apply at this link https://www.selwaybitterroot.org/fellowship
Caption: Wilderness fellows live and work in very special places.
Caption: Wilderness Ranger Fellows work in extremely special places