WISCONSIN—Together with the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance, the USDA Forest Service recently held its 2022 National Wilderness Awards Ceremony. The event recognizes individuals and groups for excellence in wilderness education, traditional skills leadership, overall wilderness stewardship and more. Two recipients were the Eastern Region’s Community Engagement Team and Connie Cummins, retired forest supervisor on the Superior National Forest.

A multidisciplinary team led by the Eastern Region Community Engagement Team, including Lisa Perez, Teri Heyer, Jessie Scott, Leah Anderson, Susan Cox, Barbara McGuiness and Jonathan Thompson, received the 2022 Connie G. Myers Award for Leadership in Wilderness Education. 

The team did an outstanding job deepening and expanding partnerships to allocate $1.8 million to support 28 projects across the region. In addition to those funds, they received a partner match of about $1.6 million. Through close collaboration with several partners and national forests in the region, along with critical support from the offices of Budget & Performance Accountability and Grants & Agreements, the team expanded Urban Connections programming to connect underserved youth to nature by arranging visits to public lands, including to national forest wilderness areas.

In 2021, congressionally directed language encouraged the Forest Service to make additional investments in the Urban Connections Program, with the specific goal of conducting regionwide youth engagement and activities focused on outdoor recreation and learning in Forest Service-managed wilderness areas. The team surpassed those goals with its wilderness education efforts.

Connie Cummins, former forest supervisor for the Superior National Forest, was awarded the 2022 Line Officer Wilderness Leadership Award. Cummins, who retired last fall, was nominated for her outstanding contributions to wilderness stewardship and her commitment to meeting wilderness stewardship performance goals, especially in opportunities for solitude, a measure of standard in the wilderness stewardship performance goals. 

While an increasing number of visitors seek out one of the largest and most heavily used wilderness areas in the U.S. for primitive recreational experiences, managing the balance of these wilderness experiences while preserving its unique natural resources is no easy task. Cummins provided thoughtful and logical leadership to address physical and social resource damage through necessary and appropriate steps to meet our mandate to manage the wilderness as directed by law, forest plan and agency policy. As a result, Superior National Forest received the highest scoring level in the Wilderness Stewardship Performance Program in the Opportunities for Solitude element. 

Congratulations to all the winners!