Fighting an enemy invader

Not unlike millions of other young men who were drafted to fight the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Press Clewe was 19 years old when he entered the US Marine Corps Reserve Officer’s Training program. Contrary to so many others’ experiences, however, Press earned an excused absence from mandatory military training during the summers of 1967 and 1968 by working for the US Forest Service’s Blister Rust Control (BRC) program. For three months each during those two summers, Press’s service to his country took the form of slashing through the woods of northern California in an attempt to protect white pines on the Plumas National Forest from the invasive fungal pathogen white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola).

White pine blister rust (WPBR for short) kills over 95% of white pines it infects, including eastern and western white pine, sugar pine, and all other species of white pine in North America. The fungus must spend part of its life cycle on the leaves of alternate host plants – gooseberries, currants and other members of the Ribes family are the most common hosts – and from there the spores infect pines.

Since the fungus does not spread from tree to tree but from host plants (mostly Ribes) to pines, the thinking for many years was that if Ribes could be eradicated, white pines would be saved.
Beginning in the 1920s, the US Forest Service and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enlisted young men to find and grub out Ribes to save ecologically and commercially valuable white pines across the country.

In some regions – particularly on the east coast – the program was fairly successful at stemming the spread of WPBR. Out west – particularly in the moist, rugged Pacific Northwest – the combination of climate and terrain made it all but impossible to effectively combat the spread of the disease. Luckily for young Press, the BRC persisted in its efforts in California well into the 1960s.

Press in the BRC

Press grew up in San Francisco but spent a lot of time in the woods as a youth. His family spent summers at their mountain cabin near Butte Creek outside Chico. Press loved fishing and cut track into remote streams all over the northern Sierra and around Mt. Lassen in the summertime. By the time he entered college at the University of Nevada – Reno, Press thought that he would like to study forestry, so he took a summer job with the BRC.

None of his boyhood experiences fully prepared him for the extremely rustic and isolated nature of the work he conducted as a blister rust “checker” on the Quincy Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest. He was housed in an old CCC camp in a “very old trailer.” He had the use of an outhouse, but no vehicle or phone. “For a city slicker, that was all something to get used to,” Press related in an interview with the SPF. Eventually, he was given the use of an old pickup truck for work.

His job entailed navigating with map and compass to establish string lines “straight” through the forest, measuring, mapping and flagging all of the Ribes plants (gooseberries and currants) that he found along the way. Sometimes his string lines stretched for over a mile. Given that he was working in mountainous terrain, “it was difficult to maintain a straight line,” he recounted. Another difficult aspect of the job was that “those plants have stickers on them!” Indeed, Ribes are known for their pricker-laden stems, which is a form of self-defense to protect their delicious fruits. After Press mapped and marked all of the Ribes, a crew of “grubbers” came through to dig up the plants.

*USFS BRC worker pulling out Ribes. Photo from Museum of North Idaho / The Spokane Spokesman-Review*

Technically, Press had the “easy” job. But he will never forget the day that he navigated into a dense patch of scratchy white fir trees only to encounter a pack of snakes right in the center of the thicket. He didn’t care to find out if they were rattlers, kingsnakes or otherwise: he lit out of there, tearing up his clothes and losing his hard hat in the process! Even though he pointedly does not like snakes, that was his closest and most memorable encounter with wildlife in his two summers on the Plumas. He suspects that most other wildlife probably sensed him coming from far away and gave him a wide berth.

A very formative experience

Reflecting on the impact of his summers spent working in the BRC under a real forester who was intimately familiar with all of the trees and the ecology of the forest, Press said, “That first time working in the woods was a new awakening. It really cemented in my mind that I wanted to study forestry.”

Press graduated from the University of Nevada – Reno with a degree in Forestry. After graduating, however, he went on to work with the Washoe County Civil Defense Program for many years; he was the Director of Emergency Management for Washoe County from 1989 to 2004. On a work trip in the late 1980s, he happened to meet a US Forest Service scientist who informed him that eliminating WPBR by grubbing out Ribes had been officially deemed ineffective and “of no value.” Press says it was a disappointment to learn this, but he has since been gladdened to learn of modern restoration techniques and the SPF’s work to counteract WPBR and save Tahoe’s sugar pines and white pines.

Over the years, Press has remained attuned to forest and landscape management wherever he goes. Press still loves hiking and says, “When I go out in the woods, I always look at the underside of the gooseberries and currants to see if they’re infected. If I find one that is just laden with fruit, then I do the harvesting!” After a big haul, he makes gooseberry jam.

We love this approach, which basically amounts to the Ribes version of a familiar expression: “When life gives you gooseberries, make gooseberry jam!”

Thank you, Press for sharing your colorful and unique story of working for the BRC!

For an even deeper historical dive into what BRC work was like in the 1920s, check out this firsthand account published in the Spokane Spokesman-Review in October 2005: Life as a Blister Rust Control Worker

Historical Perspective on Fighting Blister Rust