Check out what’s happened this past week in forestry news!

‘The entire habitat is gone’: Hawaii’s natural wonders claimed by lava – The Guardian

After recent lava flows, a large portion of Hawaii’s native Ohia forest has been buried under lava. The area was home to many native Hawaiian species.

Loss of Earth’s intact forests speeds up: scientists – Phys.org

Scientists are alarmed about the increasing deforestation of intact forests across the globe. Since 2000, the average amount of daily forest loss was 200 sq. km.

Hotter Cities Could Be Deadly for Americans Without Shelter – Cities Lab

With homelessness across the United States on the rise, consequences of climate change could prove deadly to those without shelter.

Climate Change First Became News 30 Years Ago. Why Haven’t We Fixed It? – National Geographic Magazine

In 1956, the New York Times was already discussing the effect greenhouse gas emissions would have on our environment. In 1988, drought, heat and fire were all hot topics in the news. So now, in 2018, why are we still not all-in on the fight against climate change?

By Leah Rambadt, American Forests

When you’re hiking, careless contact with plants and poor wardrobe choices can result in uncomfortable rashes from plants or insect bites. Here are some plants and insects you should watch for while on the trail or following your excursion, and first aid treatment you should follow if you make contact with them.

Plants

Poison Ivy

Range: All U.S. states east of the Rocky Mountains

Poison ivy leaves range from light green to a reddish color, depending on the season. It looks like a small, herbaceous plant when young, a small tree or a carpet of vines after a few years, and a massive, hairy vine after a decade of growth.

Poison Oak

Range: Western North America

This plant has lobed, oak-like leaves that grow in groups of three and range from green to bright red, depending on the season.

Poison Sumac

Range: Eastern U.S. and Canada

Poison sumac grows into a small tree. Contact with this plant results in a reaction similar to poison ivy and poison oak.

Manchineel

Range: Parts of Florida and the Caribbean

Manchineel is a flowering tree that has shiny, green leaves with spikes of small, greenish flowers. Its numerous small fruits, or “pomes,” are green or greenish-yellow when ripe, though they’re often tinged red and look similar to an apple.

The entire tree is toxic. A quick brush against its bark or standing near it can result in burning blisters. Ingesting any part of this tree or its fruit can be lethal.

Stinging Nettle

Range: Throughout the U.S. and Canada

Stinging nettle is covered with tiny, hollow hairs called trichomes that act like hypodermic needles by injecting irritants into your skin upon contact. The resulting itching sensation lasts from a few hours to a day.

Giant Hogweed

Range: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and northwestern U.S.

Description: This wildflower can grow over 14 feet tall. It has hollow, ridged stems with dark reddish-purple blotches, large compound leaves and white flower heads. Its sap is light-sensitive – skin contact followed by sunlight exposure causes severe skin and eye irritation, painful blistering, permanent scarring and blindness.

First Aid Treatment:

1. Immediately wash affected area with warm soap and water.
2. Remove contaminated clothing – Plant oil can continue to spread from clothing and shoes.
3. To ease itching and discomfort, apply cool compresses for 15 to 30 minutes at a time. Avoid topical antihistamines, anesthetics and antibiotics, which may make the skin more sensitive. Use calamine lotion or baking soda to neutralize the effects of the plants’ chemicals.

Additional step for giant hogweed – Stay out of sunlight for a few days.

Insects

General Prevention Tips:

• Research the area you’ll be hiking, and avoid peak insect times.
• Avoid wearing perfumes, scented lotions, hair sprays, shampoos, soaps or cosmetics. Also limit the number of shiny objects you wear, such as jewelry and buckles.
• Cover all exposed areas of your body with insect repellent and reapply frequently.

Stingers: Bees, Wasps, Yellow Jackets and Hornets

Stinger-type insects attack when their nests are disturbed. As you hike, pay attention to your surroundings for potential nest locations, such as in hollow trees, hanging from branches, under logs, in the ground, and sometimes in the mud or dirt banks of streams.

Flies and Mosquitoes

All flies can transmit diseases. To protect yourself, avoid traveling during peak insect season, or wear insect repellent and cover exposed skin with protective clothing, such as long-sleeved shirt and long pants snug at the wrists and ankles, heavy socks, and a hat.

Mosquitoes are repelled by bug spray, but the best protection is covering as much skin as possible. You should also avoid stagnant water or fields of damp grass.

Ticks

For more information on checking for ticks, check out Tick Checking 101.

First Aid Treatment:

Most reactions to insect bites and stings are mild, resulting in redness, itching, stinging or minor swelling. To treat bites or stings:

1. Remove the stinger if needed – try scraping it out with the flat of a knife or a credit card. The stinger will continue to release venom after the bee is dead.
2. Wash affected area with soap and water.
3. Reduce pain and swelling with a cool compress. If the injury is on an arm or a leg, elevate it.
4. Apply hydrocortisone cream, calamine lotion or baking soda paste to the bite or sting several times daily until your symptoms go away.
5. Take an antihistamine to reduce itching.

Symptoms usually disappear in 1 to 2 days.

Do your best to avoid these plants and insects while on the trail – but if you do come into contact with them, make sure to use first aid treatment. Remember to call your doctor if your symptoms worsen.

Remember to share your hiking experiences this summer with American Forests and Eddie Bauer by tagging photos on your social media with @EddieBauer (and @AmericanForests, too!) and use #WhyIHike and #contest. A grand prize winner gets an amazing hiking excursion for two!

By Nick Del Giudice, American Forests

Sunsets, gorgeous trees and solitude are all key elements to a good hike. In 2015, Campo Santo Studios, a young collective of seasoned video game developers, delivered a second-person experiential game. From the beginning, “Firewatch” was designed to immerse the player in both the wilderness of Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest and the emotional struggles of our protagonist, Henry.

Credit: Campo Santo Studios

Henry is a wildland fire lookout. Fire lookouts have been a long romanticized and a rapidly disappearing breed of conservationist. The disappearance of the wilderness lookout is due to technological advances and a better understanding of the value of fire to the health of our forests. However, the romance is understandable — being paid to live up high among the trees and mountains, waking up with the sun and a perfect view. Although there are very few actual fire lookouts left, many of the old lookout towers can be rented as wilderness retreats. For the rest of us, there is “Firewatch” the game: a glimpse into the beautiful world of a wilderness lookout and the complex emotions of a person experiencing isolation in the wild.

Credit: Campo Santo Studios

It can be helpful to approach “Firewatch” not as a game, but as an experience. The actual game-play is easy to pick up and action isn’t the focus of the game. There are few props and no omniscience for the player — you only have the information Henry does; this lifelike minimalism completes the immersion. This is refreshing in the world of video games in which first-person action is usually accompanied by a heads-up display with all manner of information the character has no way of knowing in order to make the game easier. In “Firewatch,” there is no floating path in the air or magical GPS; you have a map. If you think you’re headed in the wrong direction, consult your compass. There is an authenticity to “Firewatch,” a step back from the modern world delivered via a high-tech video game.

Credit: Campo Santo Studios

Like many great real-life hikes, the appeal mostly comes from the visual experience. The visual style of “Firewatch” is both stunning, novel and somehow familiar. The game’s artistic director, Olly Moss is a graphic designer from the U.K. specializing in recreating movie posters. The inspiration for the game design is none other than the early-20th-century promotional posters issued by the National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Forest Service. While the posters may have informed the style of the game, the substance is purely the American West. Writer Sean Vanaman told us about his childhood, enjoying the great outdoors in Wyoming’s Absaroka Wilderness, and developing the game.

“We needed the rest of the team to have experiences in the mountains of the American West,” Vanaman said. “Multiple team members are from England, so we took everyone to Yosemite and pulled as much reference of scale and expanse as possible.”

Video game environments are often just a setting, but in “Firewatch” the environment is the key to the story. With “Firewatch,” outdoors enthusiasts can find another outlet to express their passion and perhaps someone who would otherwise not interact with wilderness to get outside.

“[We] felt like if we could make a game that was beautiful enough and celebrated the wilderness as much as possible, it would, in turn, make customers care the way we did and create interest in getting out there themselves,” said Vanaman. “We’ve had countless fans email us that this worked for them. Some now volunteer for the NPS, others have become avid campers and outdoorsmen after spending years and years inside. It’s pretty amazing.”

The experience of exploring public lands is an inspiration to many at Campo Santo Studios, including Vanaman.

“These spaces are one of the things that make this country incredible,” he said. “So many countries don’t have what we have — land you can go do what you want on that hasn’t been taken over by someone else with a pocketbook.”

By showcasing the wonder of public lands in a multimedia format, perhaps some people without the ability to visit our wild spaces will be inspired. Vanaman, who was born in Ireland, remarked on the loss of forests across Western Europe and why conservation is so important.

“Becoming a steward of these places was essential to the way I grew up thinking about America,” he said. “I’m quite proud we were able to celebrate them in a small way inside of ‘Firewatch.’”

Credit: Campo Santo Studios

By Courtney Guillen, American Forests

I grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley — an incredibly unique area for many reasons, including its rich cultural intersection between Texas and Mexico. However, the most interesting part of the Valley might be its unique natural environment. I spent many formative summers riding around on my bike under the intense sun, looking for interesting worms and turtles to observe, and holding backyard funerals for any dead frogs I found.

Although I wasn’t aware of it growing up, the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) is the most biodiverse habitat in the United States. The area has a subtropical climate that invites thousands of different species of birds every winter. At any moment while hiking around the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, beautiful green jays and Altamira orioles can be spotted. Although the LRGV is a top-notch birding destination, the area has much more to offer. The Valley is home to several hundred different species of butterflies and beetles, and over a thousand different species of plants, including unique plants that can typically only be found in desert and tropical climates. Most notably, though, the Rio Grande Valley houses 18 different endangered species, including the ocelot. I remember being warned while walking around the Laguna Atascosa Refuge to beware of ocelots. The sad truth, however, is that ocelots are now uncommon. While there used to be hundreds of thousands of ocelots in the southern United States, there are now only about 50. This massive decrease in population is largely due to loss of habitat — roughly 95 percent of the ocelot’s U.S. range was converted into land used for agriculture or development.

Through American Forests’ American ReLeaf program, we use reforestation to restore threatened ecosystems and protect endangered wildlife. Since 1997, American Forests has planted over 2 million Texas thornscrub plants in the LRGV, which serve as breeding grounds for ocelots. Although restoring the ocelot population to a safer level will take many more years and thousands more acres of Texas thornscrub, American Forests understands the value in providing habitats to protect threatened and endangered species from going extinct in south Texas and all over the United States.

I am excited to be working for American Forests so that I can be involved with a nonprofit that literally changed the landscape of my hometown area for the better. Working for American Forests also gives me the opportunity to combine my passions for wildlife protection and environmental policy to create real impact for the betterment of the Earth and for our animal neighbors.

Check out what’s happened this past week in forestry news!

DC to kick off federal census of its urban forest – SmartCitiesDrive

Washington D.C. will become the first city to fully fund a tree census. The motive behind this initiative is to help the city make better use of its natural resources and further increase the benefits gained from urban forests.

Baobab trees have more than 300 uses but they’re dying in Africa – The Conversation

Nine out of 13 of Africa’s largest and oldest Baobab trees have died in the last decade. Scientists speculate this is a result of climate change. These trees, which can be up to 2,500 years old, are environmentally and culturally important.

Can a whiskey save Washington’s only native oak tree species? – The New Food Economy

Native Garry Oaks are in danger of going extinct. However Garryana Whiskey is trying to prevent that. By replanting the same species it uses to make barrels, the company hopes to raise awareness for the Garry Oak and other trees like it.

Gardeners: Plant flowers to nourish bees, hummingbirds – The Register Guard

With bees becoming more and more threatened, gardeners should focus on plants that are pollinator friendly. A large variety of different flowering plants, including wildflowers and trees, is recommended.

Lawmakers advance climate programs, even Republicans – Climate Wire

Contrary to popular belief, climate change is not a partisan issue. With increases in environmental damage, Republican lawmakers are looking to mitigate climate change.

By Nick Del Giudice, American Forests

As a beginning hiker, it can be daunting to determine what gear you actually need. The good news is that there are only a few pieces of equipment that are necessary, while others are highly recommended. Here is our list of six essentials for hiking today!

Sustenance

This may be a no-brainer, but the only way to prevent dehydration is to carry enough water for your whole journey. Much like water, you won’t get very far on an empty stomach. For day hikes, pack snacks such as jerky, granola bars, fruit or peanut butter, all of which will provide calories as well as protein to keep you fueled up.

Footwear

There is no other single piece of gear that will have such a large impact on your hiking happiness than your choice of footwear. Depending on your hike and your personal taste, there are a variety of options spanning from lightweight sandals to full on mountaineering boots.

Sandals

Some thru-hikers swear by their sandals and will wear them for whole scenic trails, while others won’t even give them a chance. One thing is certain, your feet are exposed; they’ll dry quickly, stay cool and experience less fatigue, but they’ll also be susceptible to stubs, debris and whatever else the trail brings.

Trail Runners

These are the off-road equivalent of running shoes. With a rugged sole, excellent support and world-class breathability, these are the preferred footwear of most distance thru-hikers.

Hiking Boots

There are three classes of hikers ranging from light to heavy, and each is good for a different kind of hike. Lightweight hikers are generally low-top hiking type shoes. Many models have waterproof liners that can detract from the breathability, but can add a significant amount of weather protection. Midweight hikers are the most traditional hiking boots. They are heavier than the lightweight hiker, with strong support, a tough exterior and, in most cases, strong ankle support. Heavyweight hikers are typically waterproof and their stiff, supportive soles make them the best boots for winter hikes or hikes over extremely rough terrain.

Mountaineering Boots

These are the toughest and most structured and restrictive footwear option for hiking. Because mountaineering boots were originally designed for scaling raw rock and ice climbing, they have an immensely stiff and protective sole, as well as hardcore insulation and waterproofing.

Weather-Appropriate Clothes

Check the forecast on the trail before you go, and dress accordingly! When it is warm out, make sure your layers wick moisture away from the body, are lightweight and provide some manner of sun protection. For cooler weather, have more layers instead of thicker layers to allow for flexibility in temperature regulation. Always pack a waterproof layer in the case of inclement weather.

Multi-tool/knife

There are many uses for a sharp blade or any of the various tools that come on a standard multi-tool/pocketknife. While you may not use all of them, the tool doesn’t weigh that much and could save the day, whether by opening a can or making an impromptu shelter and fire.

Navigation

Many hikers use their phones for navigation on the trail, and many local/regional trails are so well populated and marked that real navigation gear is unnecessary. However, for those of you that are looking to go off trail or backwoods, having basic navigation equipment and knowing how to use it is essential. Supplement those trail map apps with an up-to-date waterproof map and a magnetic compass.

First Aid Kit

A first aid kit is essential to every hike. For a day hike, your kit should at least have bandages/gauze, anti-septic, sterile gloves and acetaminophen or ibuprofen. However, for longer and more difficult hikes, your med kit should be more extensive items, such as a tourniquet or supplies to tie a splint. The goal of any good first aid kit is to have the tools necessary to stabilize you or someone else in an emergency situation until help arrives.

This is by no means a complete list of what you need to hike, but this list is a good place to begin. When you do get out there, share your experience with American Forests and our partner, Eddie Bauer, by tagging photos on your social media with @AmericanForests and #WhyIHike. You could win one of three hiking destinations!