Advice from a local volunteer
Pamela “Flask” Gude is the conservation commissioner in Bolton, Vermont, who is helping Girl Scouts earn their highest awards. She says:
We have in our town a forest parcel that is part of an important and vanishing kind of natural community. People use it for recreation and for foraging of natural foods. We're trying to write management policy but when we asked about how much harvesting can be done to specific plants in this forest without damaging them, the answer we got was “We don’t know. Nobody has ever done that research.” So we got a working group from The University of Vermont to develop a research protocol for us, but now we don’t have a team to run the research.
That could be you.
There’s also another piece of research about deer populations and overgrazing that a county forester near here would be interested in having done, but it takes a team of volunteers and the team leader would need to figure out how to run the protocol.
That could be you.
If you don’t happen to live near me and you want to explore possibilities like this, ask your local forester or your conservation commission. If you are not sure how to approach YOUR conservation commission. you are welcome to talk with me and observe my conservation commission at work. We have a standing invitation to Girl Scouts who are thinking about conservation work to come and observe.