Clint Kolarich
After the retirement of Bob Dalrymple earlier this year, Wrangell has been searching for a new ranger for their Forest Service district. As of last Sunday, that search has come to an end. Clint Kolarich, the new ranger, comes to Wrangell with an extensive background with the Forest Service.
"I was in the YCC [Youth Conservation Corps] when I was a junior in high school, and from there I went into seasonal firefighting," he said. "That was back in 1986. So I was off and on in seasonal firefighting up through the '90s. I finally got a permanent appointment in the early 2000s. I shouldn't say 'finally,' that's when I applied."
Back when he was a seasonal firefighter, he also worked as a contractor in residential construction. His first permanent position with the Forest Service was in New Mexico, where he worked as a fuels technician in the Cibola National Forest, near Albuquerque. From there, he moved to Montana, where he worked in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest as an assistant fire management officer.
"It's all fire related but it was more on the planning side," Kolarich said. "Planning side meaning forest management, or vegetation management work. So I was, I guess you could say, the specialist or subject matter expert on the fire and fuel side of forest management planning teams."
From that assistant position, Kolarich said that he then went into working as an interdisciplinary NEPA team leader. This was a region-wide office for Region 1 in Montana, he said. The experience was vital for him moving into a district ranger position.
"District rangers are, let me think of the best way to phrase this, they're in my opinion one of the Forest Service's main interfaces with communities," he said.
When he felt he was ready to move into a district ranger position, Kolarich said that he wanted it to be in a rural community, preferably either in Montana or Southeast Alaska. There are a lot of similarities between the two areas, he said, and the rural lifestyle was one he really enjoys. There were job openings around Wrangell, Petersburg, and Prince of Wales all around the same time, he said, but he had a special feeling about the job in Wrangell.
"I would have been happy to end up in any of those communities, but I'll tell you I kind of had a sixth sense that if I was going to be selected, it was going to be for Wrangell," Kolarich said. "I do have a friend in Montana who has a cabin here for a period of years, and I don't know why I felt like it would be Wrangell, but here I am."
Still settling into his new position, Kolarich said that his main goal for the near future is integrating himself with the Wrangell community. He is hoping to make friends in town, learn more about the community, and strengthen the ties between the city and the Forest Service.
"I want to learn. I want to learn about the community, about how the Forest Service, this district interfaces with the community," he said. "It seems that there are good relationships between the Forest Service and the community, and one goal of any ranger is not only to maintain those relationships but to look for opportunities to build upon those relationships. That would be a priority for me."
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