<\/p>\n
Wilderness Fellow Position Description<\/strong><\/p>\n Title:<\/u>\u00a0Wilderness Fellow<\/p>\n Reports To:<\/u>\u00a0National Program Director<\/p>\n Classification:<\/u>\u00a0Hourly<\/p>\n Locations:<\/u>\u00a0Positions are available nationwide, including in Alaska, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Washington<\/p>\n Start Date:<\/u>\u00a0June 7, 2021 (Fellowships range from 6 months to a year)<\/p>\n Time:\u00a0<\/u>Full Time (40 hours), Seasonal<\/p>\n Salary:<\/u>\u00a0$15 hourly<\/p>\n Benefits:<\/u>\u00a01 earned personal day per month (vacation is not eligible to be cashed out at any time) and federal holidays; Forest Service housing or a housing stipend provided.<\/p>\n Application Closing Date:<\/u>\u00a0March 19th<\/sup>, 2021<\/p>\n PDF of the Position Description (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Partners<\/strong><\/p>\n The Society for Wilderness Stewardship (SWS) is a non-profit organization seeking to promote excellence in the professional practice of wilderness stewardship, science, and education to ensure the life-sustaining benefits of wilderness.\u00a0 In other words, we are a professional society working to set the standard for wilderness management.<\/p>\n The Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (Leopold) is dedicated to the development and dissemination of knowledge needed to improve the management of wilderness, parks, and similarly protected areas.\u00a0 The Leopold Institute was established in 1993 under the Rocky Mountain Research Station and has been the wilderness research arm of federal agencies ever since.\u00a0 The Institute operates under an interagency agreement among the federal agencies that have wilderness management or research responsibility \u2013 the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p>\n The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was founded by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, and today oversees 445 wilderness areas or 33% of the National Wilderness Preservation System.\u00a0 Inaugural Chief of the USFS, Gifford Pinchot, stated that the USFS existed to \u201cprovide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n Program Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n The Wilderness Fellows Program is a collaborative of the three organizations above, and was created in order to complete Wilderness Character Baseline Assessments, thereby continuing important assessment work that has been underway since 2001, and fulfilling the USFS Wilderness Stewardship Performance (WSP) element \u201cWilderness Character Baseline\u201d.\u00a0 The Wilderness Character Baseline requires that steps be made to determine a baseline and provide the foundation for evaluating trends in wilderness character.\u00a0 These trends indicate the outcome of management actions and success at preserving wilderness character as directed by the Wilderness Act.<\/p>\n As stated in\u00a0Keeping It Wild 2: An Updated Interagency Strategy to Monitor Trends in Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System<\/a>\u00a0(Landres et. al, 2015), \u201cthe results of wilderness character monitoring provide [agency staff who manage wilderness day-to-day, and regional and national staff who develop wilderness policy and assess its effectiveness] some of the key data they need to improve wilderness stewardship and wilderness policy.\u201d\u00a0 The report goes on to say that, \u201cImplementing this monitoring strategy does not guarantee the preservation of wilderness character, but it informs and improves wilderness stewardship, and ensures managers are accountable to the central mandate of the 1964 Wilderness act \u2013 to preserve wilderness character.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2001, the USFS Wilderness Monitoring Committee developed the first national framework for Wilderness Character Monitoring (WCM).\u00a0 Progression was attained by the USFS in 2006 with WCM pilot testing occurring in every USFS region and the publication of the\u00a0Applying the Concept of Wilderness Character to National Forest Planning, Monitoring, and Management<\/a>\u00a0in 2008.<\/p>\n