Forestry Expo marks its 20th year
Whitefish Middle School fifth-graders Jack Blair, Kate Streibich and Ocala Muth laugh with classmate Dylan Eve, left, as he is pinched by a crayfish during the fisheries demonstration at the Family Forestry Expo on Wednesday afternoon. The Expo is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Allison Money/Daily Inter Lake
Spencer, a Barred Owl, sits perched in a habitat at the Family Forestry Expo raptors exhibit Wednesday afternoon. The Barred Owl and other raptors on display including a Great Horned Owl, a Saw-Whet pigmy owl and a Merlin Falcon belong to Wildlife Return, which rehabilitates injured birds and uses those who cannot return to the wild for educational purposes. Allison Money/Daily Inter Lake
The Daily Inter Lake
Fixed-up facilities will greet visitors to events this week
With a new shine on trails and facilities at the Trumbull Creek Educational Forest west of Columbia Falls, the 20th annual Family Forestry Expo is under way this week.
On weekdays, the Expo is a destination for Northwest Montana fifth-graders, while Saturday and Sunday it is open to the public.
Expo features a .7-mile forest walk with educational stations on fisheries and aquatic ecology, riparian vegetation, native plants and noxious weeds, backcountry ethics, wildlife, fire management, archeology and more.
The weekend features a grandstand show with demonstrations and exhibits, along with tours of nearby sawmills and free logging-camp lunches.
About 1,200 fifth-graders attend each year and the weekends usually attract another 1,000 people.
Holly McKenzie, the Montana chairwoman of the Society of American Foresters, estimates that some 40,000 people have attended Expo throughout its history. And many, of course, have attended more than once.
To prepare for the 20th Expo, more than 40 volunteers turned out recently to give the Expo site a facelift.
Two structures were completely rebuilt with cedar posts and rails, trails were cleared of brush and debris, paintball marks were cleaned up, benches were rebuilt, trash was picked up, dead and rotting trees were removed so they wouldn't fall on the trails or stations, and brush was thinned out.
The volunteers represented the Hoo Hoo 187 fraternal organization, the Society of American Foresters, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service, the Montana Logging Association, Boy Scout Troop 17 from Whitefish, Stoltze Land and Lumber employees, Montana Women in Timber, and various independent logging contractors and equipment companies.
They brought their own tools and heavy equipment to get the job done.
"Many of these volunteers have been laid off for the past several months and have found little or no work this past winter as local mills have shut down due to sluggish lumber markets," McKenzie said. "But they still turned out to help rebuild a facility that caters to educating the public about the importance of natural resource management and forest restoration."
The Expo is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The grandstand show, starting with a Flathead Valley Community College Logging Sports Team competition, gets under way at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday and at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
The free lunch is served at 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.
The Trumbull Creek Educational Forest is located off Half Moon Road, two miles north of the intersection of Montana 40 and U.S. 2.