DOVER-FOXCROFT – The Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District is the 2002 recipient of the Chief’s Field Award for the eastern region of the country.

The award, generated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, is one of many issued annually to recognize participants in the NRCS Earth Team Volunteer Program.

The Chief’s Field Award recognizes one NRCS office in each region for use of volunteer resources and accomplishments. The local NRCS-conservation district was recognized for work at the Piscataquis County SWCD demonstration forest in Williamsburg Plantation.

The project, when completed, will offer recreational and educational opportunities with interpretive hiking trails set on the district’s 180-acre forest. The property will feature an outdoor classroom, kiosk, interpretive signs, forestry best management practices displays and four-season trails. It has two historical homestead sites and a glacially formed canyon unique to the region.

Work at the forest has been a cooperative effort, with heavy contributions by the district, NRCS, the Maine Forest Service, and student volunteers from Foxcroft Academy’s forestry program. The FA students worked on boundary lines and mapping, conducted inventories, cleared recreational trails, erected signposts for interpretive information, researched the history of the homestead sites, leveled the road into the forest and have been involved in management plan construction and in all types of harvesting.

Other groups involved in the effort were the Maine Audubon Society, Maine Department of Conservation, Maine Natural Areas Program, Boy Scouts of America, Low-Impact Forestry Project, the Land Use Regulation Commission, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, University of Maine Forest Ecology Department, and the Penobscot Indian Nation.