NEW WAVE

WANDERING WILDERNESS WITH KATHLEEN PANGAN

Welcome to the Job Board, where Blue Ridge Outdoors goes behind the scenes with outdoor industry professionals on how they got the job, their daily routine, and more.

BY ELLEN KANZINGER

FROM INVASIVE SPECIES REMOVAL AND HABITAT

restoration to mapping for UPS, leading yoga sessions for people with special needs, and organizing volunteers for nonprofits, Kathleen Pangan has done a little bit of everything over the last two decades.

In her most recent role, Pangan spent a year as a wilderness specialist with Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS). Working in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area of Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest, which includes four wilderness areas, she spent her time monitoring recreation sites, organizing data, connecting with specialists, and writing reports. “I think the reason I liked UPS so much was there was a breadth of tasks,” Pangan said. “The combination of fieldwork, computer analysis, and outreach is what appealed to me.”

But Pangan’s main duties were evaluating her assigned area in accordance with the Wilderness Act of 1964, which created the highest form of legal protection for designated public lands, intending to completely preserve their natural, undisturbed character. “There should be a place where you can feel like it’s just you and nature,” Pangan said.

BRO: What did your day to day look like as a wilderness specialist?

KP: It depends on what the needs of the district are. For my position, it’s more time management for seasons. At the beginning of my season last June, I walked all the trails and scouted to make sure I knew where all of the blow downs were. In wildernesses, you can’t use mechanical tools like a chainsaw. So you have to use an axe or cross cut in order to take these trees that have fallen into our paths to put them aside. I hosted the trail crew team and showed them where they were at because I’m more familiar with the area.

In the fall, I managed my time so that I would be able to walk all trails in all the wildernesses and look for recreation sights. I recorded all of them using a tablet and put them on a map. This is for management to be able to see how many people are coming, how popular a place is, if there’s trash, are the trees getting chopped down, is the ground eroded and trampled.

Throughout the winter and into spring, that is when

A VIEW OF MOUNT ROGERS NATIONAL RECREATION AREA FROM BIG PINNACLE. PHOTO BY ELLEN KANZINGER

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