NPR-A Subsistence Advisory Panel

“Idaho BLM, in partnership with Meridian School District and Northwest Nazarene University, completed its fourth successful year of ‘FIRE Up for Summer!’, a hands-on field-based course for high school students. Since the fall of 2002, BLM staff has worked with a team of four Meridian School District high school teachers to develop a curriculum that focuses on fire fuels, the techniques for monitoring them and fire hazard analyses for homes and structures in some of Idaho's most rural communities.

The main objectives of this program are to produce data and other information that the BLM could actually use in its land management activities while giving the students "real world" work experience. Students navigated with GPS units to points established for data collection; documented those areas using digital photography; recorded monitoring data with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs); downloaded the data to laptops; analyzed it; and created posters to illustrate their research results using GIS software. Each student team presented the results of their research to agency managers, staff and the general public at an event known as Student Showcase Day.

This three-week course for high school students received a ‘Cooperative Conservation Award’ from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and the BLM Director's ‘Cooperative Conservation Award’.”