Welcome to another issue of our newsletter! Find out who our upcoming speakers are, what we covered in this week's meeting and any other scheduled events.
19 Members, one Visiting Rotarian, and one Guest joined us in person and this week's speaker joined via ZOOM. Our visitor was Saul Oltiz from Brawley CA. Their club is also celebrating their centennial year. Guest Kristin Smith found out about the club through the golf tournament.
Club President Tonya Watson called the 3rd meeting of the 2021-2022 Rotary year at 12:05pm. The Pledge was led by Richard Lozano. Tonya led the club with a moment of silence.
The Rotary Moment was led by Eric Walden . The HS Interact club had 18 attendees due to success of last year’s service projects. 15 dues paying members is enough to formally charter with Rotary International. And spread the word... It’s cool to be a Rotarian.
This week's program
Mike Williams introduced Jeremy Krueger, Chief Executive Four Forest Restoration Initiative at the U.S. Forest Service. Jeremy is based here in Flagstaff.
The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) https://4fri.org/ has been created to accelerate an ambitious restoration program to improve and sustain watershed health, improve wildlife habitat, conserve biodiversity, protect old-growth, reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildland fire and promote the reintroduction of natural fire, and restore natural forest structure and function so that forests are more resilient to climate change.
Four national forests – the Kaibab, Coconino, Apache-Sitgreaves, and Tonto are a part of a collaborative, landscape-scale initiative designed to restore fire-adapted ecosystems in the northern AZ. This is approximately 2+ million acres of timber forest and related watersheds.
The overall goals of 4FRI are to
restore the structure, pattern, composition, and health of fire-adapted ponderosa pine ecosystems,
reduce fuels and the risk of unnaturally severe wildfires, and
provide for wildlife and plant diversity.
In addition to creating sustainable ecosystems, one of the key objectives is creating and developing sustainable industries. Jeremy noted we should think of the forest as an investment. The Forest Service is working with the State of AZ, private industry and environmental NGO partners to provide a long term supply of forest products to support the Forest Service activities. Included are state ( AZ State Forestry, AZ Game & Fish), local (the City of Flagstaff, Coconino Board of Supervisors, NAU) and national groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity.
As a part of this project, over $300 million has been spent by the Forest Service and its partners to provide equipment, sawmills, transportation, and worker training. It has provided AZ with 900 FTEs and over $50 million in labor income. The project is currently harvesting 13-14K acres annually with a goal of 50k acres of timber harvesting.
Tonya closed the program by noting a young reader book “Hatchet” will be donated in Jeremy’s name to the reading room of the library of the FFFC.
Past President Carla Viola provided an update on the SUCCESSFUL August 2 golf tournament. The golf field was sold out with 112 golfers. The initial results are we raised $10,238!!! This year's partner was the Northland Hospice. They will receive a check for 50% of the proceeds at the Sept 7th Rotary meeting.
Rotary Call to action….
August is membership month! Invite people that you volunteer with elsewhere to our meeting.
Let Tonya and Millie know of suggestions for monthly volunteer activities
Wrap up Rotary announcements
Happy Bucks – Hoppy is celebrating 55 years of wedded bliss this next week. Paul is happily sending his son to college. Steve Colf is celebrating 57 years with Marianne. Not to be outdone, Kimberly Batty-Herbert and her husband are celebrating 36 years this week also.
Richard Lozano has donated the American flag and stand we are using at Taverna.
Mark your calendars!
August 23rd Club Social at the Sportsman's Bar and Grill
August 28th Volunteer / Service Project at Camp Colton
