Butte Field Office specialists introduce Girl Scouts to careers in resource management

Carrie Kiely, Archeologist, Butte Field Office; and MaryLou Zimmerman, Forester, Butte Field Office

Members of the Butte Field Office were recently treated to a day in the field with local Girl Scout Troop #3816.

The 11- and 12-year old scouts wanted to spend time with women professionals, talking about careers, how to prepare for them, and what type of work we do in the field. Foresters MaryLou Zimmerman and Conor Cubit, and Archeologist Carrie Kiely were happy to oblige.

Rain didn’t dampen their enthusiasm as they learned about prehistoric occupations in the Big Hole area. The group visited an eroding site where they could see and feel hearth rocks and tool flakes and talk about the people that lived there.

The girls had a lot of questions.

“When did people get to Montana?” “How many lived here (at the site)”? Ms. Kiely explained that archeologists are still in pursuit of the answers to those questions, and asked the girls to think about the site location and what made it special. She asked them, “Do you like it here?” and “Why?” She explained that these sorts of questions seem like a game, but they are actually “thought experiments” that help archeologists make sense of the sites they find. She also explained that archeologists use information from all sorts of resources besides artifacts: plants and pollen, soil, trees and rocks and wildlife.

The girls asked about keeping artifacts they found, and Ms. Kiely explained why they need to leave archeological sites alone on public land so that the sites are preserved for future scientists like themselves. She reminded them to ‘take only pictures and leave only footprints.’

The next stop was a recently completed timber sale and prescribed burn unit. The girls participated in a discussion of forest ecology and the role of fire and bark beetles.

Observations from the girls were very enlightening, including questions about the temperament of beetles. “Are beetles good or bad?” one scout asked. “Are beetles mean?” Convinced that beetles were not mean, this scout put a metallic wood borer in her pocket to keep it warm.

After a discussion on the life cycle of beetles, their relationship to conifers and the role of disturbances like wildfire, another scout asked, “You mean like, frenemies?” And thus the flow of information continued between the scouts and the professionals, each group learning from the other.

The scouts learned how to measure and age trees. They were amazed that one tree was about 500 years old! The girls shared their current plans for their futures. One scout hopes to become a veterinarian, another to own fancy hotels, a third plans on becoming an environmental engineer.