By: Hannah Vase ’25 MF/MAR
Summers at Yale-Myers Forest Camp brim with stories of previous years and the promise of new ones. Each year, forestry students participate in a 12-week Apprentice Forester Program at Yale Forests, known as “Forest Crew.” The program has taken several shapes since its beginning in 1940, but the core of learning forestry skills and applying them remains.
Led by Forest Manager Shaylyn Austin ‘23 MF, this year’s cohort was made up of recently graduated students Baboucarr Joof ‘25 MF, Tashi ‘25 MF, Hannah Vase ‘25 MF/MAR, and first years rising into their second year Cat De Lima Marcal ‘26 MF, Jacob Frame ‘26 MF/MBA, Chris Gunderson ‘26 MF, and Will Kessler ‘26 MF.
2025 Forest Crew continued the tradition of practicing forest management skills and learning to adapt. Crew started with road maintenance and culvert digging, emphasizing the importance of well-maintained infrastructure. Interspersed throughout afternoons of manual labor were lectures from Professor Mark Ashton and Lecturer Joe Orefice, along with plant identification workshops from Research and Extension Forester Laura Green. Crew learned to interpret land use history, practiced classifying site and soils, and gained a better familiarity with forest stand dynamics in southern New England. Crew joined the Ingalls Field Ecology interns for a morning of listening to birds with Mark Ashton. Crew was also trained to safely operate chainsaws through Game of Logging. We learned to safely fell trees and buck and split logs for firewood. CT DEEP presented a workshop to educate foresters, loggers, and landowners about endangered and threatened bats in Connecticut and ways to monitor their presence.
Hannah Vase ’25 MF/MAR marks a hemlock to be removed in the crew’s crown thinning treatment.
In addition to full days in the forest, Crew recharged by swimming in Myers Reservoir, going to Bigelow Hollow State Park, or relaxing on the porch before dinner. Halfway through the summer, camp residents threw a biomes-themed party, with decorations ranging from taiga-inspired paper snowflakes to a hammock rainforest to a straw bale grassland. The annual Fourth of July celebration included a slip and slide, a clam bake, axe throwing competition, the fourth-annual beer mile (along with a well-attended cider stroll), and a bonfire, creating new memories and reinforcing the relationships with the broader YSE community.
This year, Crew focused on the Myers Division, the northern-most division of Yale-Myers Forest. Crew learned about land use history, from the Nipmuck Tribe that stewarded oak-hickory savannah to the colonial farmers that converted areas to pastureland during the Merino wool craze. Much of the Myers division is dominated by hemlock, complete with a northern aspect and wetter, rocky soils. Crew collaborated to design a sampling approach for a representative inventory.
Previous Crew’s treatments in this division meant that recent sales like Jabba the Cut, Princess Sophia’s Rainbow Fusilli, Point Number One, and others were not going to be marked this year. But they provided inspiration — and a warning — in terms of what thinning and regeneration systems could look like, in addition to what stories the name of the timber sale could allude to this year. There is a longstanding tradition that each year’s Crew has the privilege to name the timber sale they marked. Some names are more obscure references, and others rely on forestry puns.
Baboucarr Joof ’25 MF conducts release treatments in a regenerating shelterwood stand.
While sampling the Myers Division, writing silvicultural prescriptions, and marking timber, Crew kept in mind Yale Forests’ priorities of education, demonstration, and research. This means that any silvicultural recommendations should be to improve or maintain the ecology of a stand, increase age class diversity, and be economically and operationally viable.
By the end of the summer, Crew marked two timber sales in the Myers Division. The first was a crown thinning in a predominant hemlock stand. The second a regeneration treatment that included a patch selection, combined with the continuation of both an adjacent strip shelterwood and group shelterwood.
Over the course of the apprenticeship, Crew learned a variety of skills related to being a forester. We deliberated about tree marking, property boundaries, and forest health. In addition to managing a forest, we managed the heat, humidity, mosquitos, and ticks while clambering through ridge-valley topography. At the end of the day, we recharged with the cool evenings, popsicles, and spending time with fellow camp residents. We kept an ear out for birds and bats, and an eye out for remarkable ash trees and funky red maples. By August, we wrapped up a summer of learning about trees, wildlife, and working with the people around us, finalizing a formative program with our own stories to tell.
