DURHAM, N.C. – Twenty Nicholas School students gained firsthand knowledge of the complex environmental issues surrounding mining, fisheries, power generation, forest management and other critical industries of the Pacific Northwest on a weeklong field trip to Washington, Idaho and Montana this spring.

The field trip is offered every year in spring semester as a one-credit course for Master of Environment Management (MEM) students. It is led by Judd Edeburn, resources manager of Duke Forest, and is designed to introduce students to real-world natural resource topics in the Pacific Northwest, and help them better understand how resource and environmental managers deal with a diverse array of issues and challenges.

“The goal is to help students gain a well-rounded view of the issues from a number of different perspectives,” Edeburn said. “The best place to do that is out in the field.”

After flying to Spokane, Wash., the group loaded into rental vans and headed for remote northern Idaho, where they met with Ed Moreen, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site representative at the Coeur D’Alene River Basin. The basin covers much of the northern panhandle of Idaho, including the Coeur d’Alene Mining District, one of the pre-eminent ,  and  producing areas in the world.

Moreen reviewed the historic impacts of mining in the region, and explained how the EPA makes its decisions on mining site cleanup and pollution mitigation. 

After meeting with Moreen, the group traveled to nearby Wallace, Idaho, where they descended 3,000 feet below the Earth’s surface to tour the historic Galena Mine and gain firsthand knowledge of silver and lead mining operations.

“It was an amazing sensory experience going into the mine like that,” said Edeburn. Students saw demonstrations of the technology used to locate and map veins of ore, and the equipment used to extract, separate and concentrate it. They also learned how mining operations have altered over the years to minimize harmful impacts on the environment.

“Managers showed us how mine tailings, the waste rocks that are dug up along with the ore, are no longer discarded outside the mine but instead are placed back into the shafts after the ore is removed,” Edeburn said. “They also explained how the mine uses a ‘tailings pond’ to treat effluent from the waste rock to state and federal standards.”

Jeff Pippen, instructor and associate of research at the Nicholas School who helped Edeburn lead the tour, agreed that being in the mine, speaking with mine managers and seeing operations up close gave students a new perspective. 

“The experience is different when you see it in person, rather than second-hand,” Pippen said. “The feeling of being 3,000 feet deep beneath the Earth is irreplaceable.”

Following their mine tour, the group headed to western Montana, where they spent a day at the Lolo National Forest meeting with a district ranger, fire manager and fisheries biologist from the U.S. Forest Service. During a tour of the national forest, students saw the effects of recent wildfires and learned what ecosystem modifications were being made for fish habitats in that area. The following day, they visited the WildWest Institute in nearby Missoula, Mont., to learn about the institute’s environmental activism and work to protect and restore forests, watersheds and wildlife in the Northern Rockies.

The goal of these stops, Edeburn said, was to give students a chance to learn about the challenges involved in conservation and resource management on national lands from the perspectives of people who sometimes viewed those challenges differently.  

During their stay in Montana, the group also toured the Lolo Trail Ranch, where they discussed issues such as water rights, landscape management, and the benefits – and costs – of installing fish-friendly irrigation systems on the historic property.

They then headed to paper-products giant Potlatch Corp., across the border in Idaho, for an all-day tour of the company’s Forest Stewardship Council-certified timberlands and a discussion about sustainable forestry.

The trip concluded with a tour of the Lower Granite Lock and Dam on the Snake River, in eastern Washington, where the group met with a fisheries biologist to learn about efforts to install fish ladders around the dam to allow salmon and steelhead trout to migrate up and down the rive unimpeded.

Carla Frisch, who graduated from the Nicholas School in May with a MEM in environmental economics and public policy, said the trip was an eye-opening experience.

“I didn’t know much about land management before the trip, coming from an economics background. I didn’t know what to expect, but the trip was incredible. We were able to see things that people normally wouldn’t get to see, like being inside the mine,” Frisch said. “We learned a lot in a fast and concentrated way.”

That’s precisely the response Edeburn and Pippen hoped to elicit. “One of the chief benefits of this kind of field trip,” Pippen said, “is the opportunity it gives students to broaden their horizons and view real-world applications of the land management and environmental management practices they learn about in class.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Photos courtesy of: Judd Edeburn, Jeff Pippen, Laura Wittman, Amanda Harford, John Waverek and Amanda Ward.