Outstanding Public Lands Professional Awards - 2012

Technical/Operational Category

Jon Reponen
Presentation of award (l to r): BLM Oregon/Washington State Director Jerry Perez, Burns District Supervisory Forester Jon Reponen, and PLF President Edward W. Shepard.

ON REPONEN IS A SUPERVISORY FORESTER in the Bureau of Land Management’s Burns District, Three Rivers Resource Area, Hines, Oregon, who has been instrumental in a variety of stewardship activities in the District.  And, he played a key role in the development of the Claw Creek Stewardship Project.  This project was developed, contract written and awarded within months of receiving a request from State and local governments. It includes treating 900 acres with both forest and rangeland restoration treatments. Products to be produced are 700,000 board feet of ponderosa pine saw logs and almost 6,000 green tons of juniper biomass that are available for utilization.  The project will utilize previously unmarketable small diameter trees for things such as manufacturing wood pellets, power generation and lumber.

Jon is the Coordinator for the 33,000-acre Otis Mountain /Moffet Table Fuels Project. He helped organize a joint public meeting between BLM, Harney Soil and Water Conservation District, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and numerous landowners and grazing permittees.  Jon is currently involved in ongoing consultations on implementation actions and future planning.

 

Business Oregon provided money from the Oregon Governor’s discretionary fund to the Harney Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) to work on the Rudy 2 timber sale on BLM managed public lands.  The Harney SWCD hired four unemployed residents of Harney County to work on this project. They marked timber that allowed BLM to award this timber sale early in fiscal year 2013.

 

This timber sale will provide a critical supply bridge to help keep Malheur Lumber open and maintain 80 valuable mill jobs, plus additional jobs, for the logging company. The BLM benefits with the expedited implementation of its Otis Mountain Fuels Management Project.

 

Jon represents the Burns BLM District Manager during meetings of the Harney County Restoration Collaborative.  This collaborative is made up of agencies, landowners, industry, various conservation groups, and County governments that address a myriad of forest health and economic issues.  Although there are a variety of often-competing stakeholder interests, Jon has been very effective at “reaching across the aisle” and working with the different interests and finding solutions that work for them and the ground.

Jon Reponen’s extraordinary performance in an operations/technical role in these and many other resource improvement activities has earned him the Public Lands Foundation’s Outstanding Public Land Professional Award in the Operations/Technical category for 2012.