STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The U.S. Forest Service wasn’t even on Zach Poff’s radar when a Forest Service official suggested it as a career while Poff was working as a river rafting guide on the Payette River.

Poff looked into it, found it checked all the boxes re his interest in the outdoors and now he’s the Ketchum district ranger, stepping into the shoes of longtime ranger Kurt Nelson who retired last spring. Poff brings a wealth of experience to the position, having served in all sorts of roles, including a stint in Washington, D.C., working on the national trails system.

“Growing up in Michigan, we had outdoors but there was a lot of private land so the Forest Service wasn’t on my radar,” said Poff, who earlier worked as a recreation and winter sports manager for the Ketchum Ranger District for seven years.

Poff studied recreation management and environmental education at Central Michigan University before finding his way to Idaho as a civilian recreation intern at Mountain Home Air Force Base. There, he led  rafting, climbing, mountain biking, kayaking and backpacking trips all over the state and fell in love with Idaho.

After his chance encounter with the Forest Service administrator on a rafting expedition, he ended up a permit ranger on the Payette River.

Other job assignments followed, including a four-year stint as recreation management ranger in Lowman and as assistant trails program manager in the Washington, D.C., office.

 “It was a good chance to see how budgeting works and how things develop at the policy level,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to know how things work, how sausage is made.”

Poff also had temporary stints as district ranger for the Bighorn National Forest in Buffalo, Wyo., and the Fairfield District of the Sawtooth National Forest back in Idaho. Last year he worked for the Forest Legacy Program, established in 1990 to utilize conservation easements and purchases to protect environmentally important forest lands that are threatened by development or other non-forest uses.

He jumped at the chance to return to Ketchum as district ranger on a 321,541-acre Sawtooth National Forest that’s nearly the size of Phoenix.

“I decided I wanted to be back in the valley working at the district level where I feel like I can make a difference,” he said. “And this is such a unique, very engaged community. The community involvement offers a unique opportunity to do projects you don’t do elsewhere.”

Poff says the local community is so dialed in because public lands are right out their backdoor.

“The outdoor aspects bring people to this community—everyone wants to ski, hike, mountain bike. So, we have a duty to our public lands and to the community—they’re watching us, and that great.”

One of the projects in Poff’s crosshairs is the Bald Mountain Stewardship program which removes dead and dying trees to improve forest health on Bald Mountain. Since that project started, legislation has made funds available that can help workers address more acreage each year, Poff said.

Nationally, the Forest Service is doing more fuel reduction to mitigate the risk of wildfire, and Poff plans to follow suit with thinning and prescribed burns.

“It’s tougher here because the forest is so close to the community, but we can get creative and do more,” he said.

The Ketchum Ranger District has plans for expanded parking at the trailheads for Pioneer Cabin, Greenhorn and Alden Gulch. It is also conducting an environmental analysis in Greenhorn to determine the effects of rerouting part of the Greenhorn trail and replace a bridge that blew out last spring.  The former bridge was old—the wooden pilings rotted out, he said.

A new bridge similar to the new bridges in Adams Gulch would cost about $70,000.

“We need to get it done next year, but usually, we put bridges in in fall,” he said.

Poff finds himself supervising 22 fulltime employees, not including 25-man fire organization and seasonal workers. Staff includes a fish biologist, wildlife biologist, botany expert, range manager, the Sawtooth Avalanche forecasters, desk staff and some employees shared with the Fairfield Ranger District.

“It’s an exciting time in the agency as we’ve been authorized to hire new people. But this is a very hard place to recruit and retain employees because of the high cost of living,” said Poff, who wants to develop up to 80 units of workforce housing in Ketchum’s light industrial district. “Everyone wants to come here to live and work, but it’s challenging.

One of Poff’s concerns is the increase in population and use of public lands since the pandemic began in 2020.

“We need to figure out what the impacts are going to be over the next 10 years. I think usage dipped last summer, but I haven’t seen the reports yet. We have new travel counters so this is the first time we’ll had real numbers.”

In the meantime, Poff fully intends to be part of those enjoying the lands he tends.

He has a 2-year-old son named Carter who is getting a pair of skis for Christmas. And Poff plans to be out there showing him how to slide down the mountain. And he’ll be out there hunting,    fishing and skiing, in between reading books by Steinbeck and Hemingway and watching football games.

“I love the beauty of this place, the ease of access to public lands,” he said. “I love that I can ride my bike from my home to wonderful trails without getting in my car. And I love that I can ski every lunch break if I want.”