{"id":123002,"date":"2013-11-19T01:20:37","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T08:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/retiring-forest-supervisor-no-stranger-to-hot-seat\/"},"modified":"2013-11-19T01:20:37","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T08:20:37","slug":"retiring-forest-supervisor-no-stranger-to-hot-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/retiring-forest-supervisor-no-stranger-to-hot-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Retiring forest supervisor no stranger to hot seat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Stiles\"
Stiles<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mark Stiles\u2019 arrival in Durango as acting supervisor of the San Juan National Forest in May 2002 quickly became a baptism by fire.<\/p>\n

A month later, Stiles was a frontline commander in combating the Missionary Ridge Fire, which spread across 72,000 acres and defied firefighters for 39 days.<\/p>\n

Today, as he prepares for retirement on Dec. 2, Stiles remembers the fire, the third-largest by acreage in state history \u2013 exceeded only by the Hayman Fire southwest of Denver that started a day before the Missionary Ridge Fire and last year\u2019s High Park Fire in Larimer County \u2013 as only one of many career highlights.<\/p>\n

Stiles cited the repatriation and\/or reburial of ancestral Puebloan remains and artifacts and the establishment of two national monuments \u2013 Canyon of the Ancients in 2000 and Chimney Rock this year \u2013 as significant memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe importance of creating the national monuments is that you\u2019re laying the foundation for management of the land for hundreds of years,\u201d Stiles said.<\/p>\n

San Juan Mountains Association leaders are sorry to see Stiles leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been incredibly supportive and a strong advocate of our work for 10 years,\u201d said Executive Director Susan Bryson. \u201cHe was instrumental in our reaching our recent 25th anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathe Hayes, director of the SJMA volunteer program, said Stiles has been a staunch backer of the work she does.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, volunteers, operate 13 national forest bookstores, run visitor information centers and help manage the wild horse program in Disappointment Valley,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cHe\u2019s been extremely supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n

National forest spokeswoman Ann Bond said the search for Stiles\u2019 replacement will start at the regional level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regional office will select an acting forest supervisor until a permanent replacement is named,\u201d Bond said. \u201cThe process is just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stiles, who has 32 years with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, was born on the 44,000-acre Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in the Little Egypt delta region in southern Illinois. His father was the refuge manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to be a biologist when I was 5 years old,\u201d said Stiles, who went on to earn a degree in wildlife biology and a master\u2019s degree in economics from Colorado State University.<\/p>\n

Stiles, 56, managed the Bureau of Land Management\u2019s Western Slope Center from Montrose and Grand Junction immediately before coming to Durango.<\/p>\n

From the ashes of the Missionary Ridge Fire, forestry officials began devising a different overall view of how to fight wildfires, Stiles said.<\/p>\n

He remembers the Little Sand Fire of 2012 and the West Fork Complex Fire this summer as examples of the new approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t try to confront those fires on all fronts, but chose the best ground on which to suppress them,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cSan Juan National Forest officials were leaders in this thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stiles said he has been impressed with the level and quality of public involvement in community, national forest and environmental issues. Agency officials must give community leaders a chance to lead, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom bouncing around and from my counterparts elsewhere, I know this level of involvement isn\u2019t the same everywhere,\u201d Stiles said.<\/p>\n

Stiles said he\u2019d be remiss if he didn\u2019t credit the volunteer San Juan Mountains Association, the Mountain Studies Institute, Trails 2000, the Four Corners Back Country Horsemen and off-road vehicle groups for their contributions to forest-management decisions.<\/p>\n

Retirement will allow him to ski and hike more, Stiles said. His wife, Bernie, will continue to work as a preschool director at Riverview Elementary School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been warned by retirees not to get too busy with too many volunteer projects,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cBut in the long-term, I\u2019d like to get involved in community and regional efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

daler@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Juan career battling 72,000-acre blaze<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-123002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123002"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=123002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}