Wildland Fire S-212 Training at Radnor Lake State Natural Area (February 13th-16th, 2018)

A four day S-212 chainsaw operations course was recently held on February 13th thru 16th at Radnor Lake State Natural Area for Tennessee State Parks and Tennessee Division of Forestry Personnel. This training builds upon a previous training held at Radnor Lake in February 2015, ensures all of our Radnor Lake Ranger Staff are felling certified and is part of our resource management goals for the natural area.
This course and a variety of courses are developed by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) headquartered in Boise, Idaho which partners with agencies across the nation both federal, state, and local to respond to unplanned but expected incidents such as wildfire, storms, floods, as well as daily duties of fire, forestry, park, wildlife, and other agencies.
The training and skills covered in this S-212 chainsaw operation course are important to a number of activities at Radnor Lake State Natural Area, especially trail development and maintenance which require a lot of cutting of both down and standing trees and brush on an annual basis.
Simultaneously the cutting and control of invasive-exotic invasive trees and plants is a high priority at Radnor Lake as these species multiply rapidly and out compete the native desirable vegetation. Some of the native trees to be helped and restored from the removal of invasive-exotic plants during this 4 day training were formerly more common to the area like walnut, white and red oaks, poplar (the state tree). This course is taught primarily in the Hall Farm portion of Radnor Lake which is the centerpiece of our current native grasslands restoration efforts as well in our efforts to restore 40+ acres of native grasslands back to the natural area to sustain ground nesting bird habitat and butterfly species dependent upon these areas for survival.
Most importantly, this training raises the skill, effiency and safety levels for all chainsaw operators working on Tennessee State Forests, Tennessee State Parks and Tennessee State Natural Areas.
This 4-day training was made possible thanks to the partnership between Friends of Radnor Lake, Tennessee Division of Forestry and Tennessee State Parks with 8 participants from Tennessee Division of Forestry and Tennessee State Parks receiving this training from Instructor Mike Huddleston (consulting forester / retired tn division of forestry).
Special thanks to Mike Huddleston (Instructor), Robin Bible (Tennessee Division of Forestry), Jeff Piatt (Tennessee Division of Forestry), Shane Petty(Tennessee State Parks), Lori Jett (Tennessee State Parks), Gretchen Pritchett (Friends of Radnor Lake), Park Manager Chris Cole (Standing Stone State Park Manager/EMT-P), Lyndy Maness and the park staff at Radnor Lake for all of their help to make this training possible.
This is the first of two training certification classes being offered this year and we will be beginning a second week of the training for a new group of participants 9 (TDF, TDNA and TSP) February 20th thru 23rd, 2018.

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward

S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward
S-212 Chainsaw Felling Class at RLSNA Session 1 Feb. 2018. Pix by S. Ward