Sean C. Morgan
After nearly four years as Sweet Home District Ranger, Cindy Glick has taken a position at the Siuslaw National Forest, and Nikki Swanson will fill in as acting ranger.
“I am grateful for all the work done by the Sweet Home Ranger District during Cindy’s tenure and wish her the best,” said Tracy Beck, Willamette National Forest supervisor, announcing the move.
Swanson has served as an acting ranger previously and is currently the Willamette National Forest Aquatics Program manager. She began her permanent Forest Service career as a fisheries biologist.
“I think you’ll see the district is in good hands,” Glick said.
Swanson took over Jan. 13.
“I look forward to working some more with the employees of the Sweet Home Ranger District as well as with the community,” she said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to be of service.”
Glick, 62, who has been Sweet Home district ranger since April 2011, when she arrived from Sisters, said she’s “sad” about ending her tenure in Sweet Home.
“Life happens. Changes need to occur. I’m getting older. It’s a great community. I really enjoyed working here.”
“I think it’s a big loss,” said Jo Ann McQueary, who served with Glick on the Sweet Home Economic Development Group Board of Directors. “She is a great resource, has a lot of connections, a lot of energy and enthusiasm. That is going to be a big void. I’m really sorry to see her leave us.”
Glick said she plans to work at Siuslaw for a short time on a number of projects. She worked there for 14 years at the beginning of her career.
Now she’ll help Siuslaw finish up projects on Mary’s Peak, the Corvallis to Sea trail, Salmon River, she said. After that, this spring or early summer, she plans to retire.
“We’re not moving,” said Glick, who lives here with her husband Dave Glick, a teacher who retired four years ago. “We’re staying here in Sweet Home.”
She has remaining obligations here, she said. Among them, she is president of the Sweet Home Rotary Club, finishing her term this summer. She’s also on several committee groups, but that will be harder with her working in Corvallis.
She and Dave haven’t decided what they will do after she retires.
Glick and the district have also been a big part of recreation in the area, including a cooperative effort in the Quartzville area, which involves Corps of Engineers, the state, Bureau of Land Management and Linn County Parks.
She has also been a prominent player in building public-private efforts involving recreation and bio-char, establishing the Sweet Home All-Lands Coalition and the Governor’s Solutions Team effort to establish South Santiam Forest Corridor, and the federal Livability Initiative.
Glick has worked with Oregon State University College of Forestry Dean Thomas Manness toward establishing a Forestry Research Institute working forest east of Sweet Home.
The institute would bring college faculty and students on research projects in the local forest focused on developing ways to better utilize forest resources by balancing ecological, social and economic needs.
The institute is one of the major outcomes of the Solution’s Team’s work.
City Manager Craig Martin said Glick has brought a positive and unique perspective of how a community with Sweet Home’s history can still benefit from public forestlands.
“I’ve worked with her since she arrived in Sweet Home,” Martin said. “She’s been a key figure in what I would consider our ongoing effort to reconnect our community, Sweet Home, to forest resources.
“I think she was great for Sweet Home.
She came up with “innovative and creative ways of utilizing what’s our biggest resource, our location, the geography and the landscape we have around Sweet Home,” Martin said.
Those efforts resulted in efforts like the Cool Soda Planning Area, an area of mixed ownership, with land managed by Cascade Timber Consulting and the Forest Service. The project resulted in projects to benefit and address issues shared by the two organizations.
The district is implementing the resulting environmental assessment, she said, which includes timber sales. The district is in the process of a similar project around Trout Creek.
The district has been very supportive of the community forest effort, with district and county officials working on plans for a trail from Sweet Home to the national forest, Glick said.
Going forward, the district plans to build a day use area at the site of the old ranger station along Highway 20 near Short Bridge in Cascadia, which would include a fish viewing platform and an interpretive trail.
And talks have gotten as close as they’ve ever been on figuring out what to do with Cascadia Cave, located on property managed by CTC, Glick said. The site features petroglyphs by area native Americans.
The All Lands Collaborative is moving forward as a participant in these projects.
The group of area stakeholders took off as a collaboration of ideas.
“Everybody said, ‘What about this and what about that?’” Glick recalled. Today, the collaborative has a funded coordinator and is working on status as a nonprofit tax-deductible organization.
She credits Linn County Commissioner Will Tucker and new SHALC coordinator Sharon Kanaroff for moving the effort forward.
She has enjoyed working with them, and she also has enjoyed working with area land owners and agencies to promote stewardship on the landscapes while helping everyone on that landscape to have a role.
Glick said she has enjoyed working with people in the Ranger District, whether it’s putting out fires or restoring and using fire on the landscape.
“I’m very proud of the work we did with the Indian tribes,” she said, protecting and restoring historical resources, including traditional foods.
As part of these efforts, she encourages people to get involved in harvesting special forest products, from vine maple and Oregon grape roots to bear grass and noble fir boughs.
“There’s opportunities, and we have them available to the public,” Glick said, as the district attempts to diversify the use of the forest, a significant piece of the Cool Soda project. “These can create some sizable incomes for people.”