LINCOLN — Fourteen-year-old Emilee Morgan sees a bright future with the Forest Service working with packhorses and mules.

A three-day pack trip into the Scapegoat Wilderness as part of a summer internship with the Helena National Forest convinced the Lincoln High School freshman she’d enjoy the work.

“I thought it was really cool,” she said. “I watched them pack everything,” learning how important it is to correctly balance the load.

Morgan is one of three Lincoln high school students participating in a Youth Forest Monitoring Program, a seven-week, paid-internship program offered by the Helena National Forest.

The program started on the Helena Forest in 1998, but this is just the second year a team has operated out of Lincoln, said program manager Liz Burke.

Monday the Lincoln team was in a sagebrush meadow up Alice Creek, measuring the density of a Dalmatian toadflax infestation.

Under the direction of their leader, Logan Mannix, the students record the site’s GPS points.

Then using their compasses, they set up their monitoring plots and begin recording data.

“Being consistent is what’s real important,” said Mannix, as he directs the students to double check their compass readings.

Next year, another team will return to the same site, to measure how effectively a recent herbicide treatment controlled the toadflax infestation.

The students are sent to a variety of sites to collect data — areas impacted by mining, grazing, wildfire or prescribed burns, said Burke.

The interns bring “new eyes on the forest” and “a fresh, new perspective,” she said.

“There are not many opportunities where students get to go out and do research and make their own recommendations,” she said.

Forty-eight students have been interns since 1998.

Of these, 10 percent went on to work in forestry or with the Forest Service, she said, and 61 percent entered a science career or took extra science courses.

While the nine students based out of Helena are split into three specialized teams that do either soil, stream or weed monitoring, the Lincoln team does it all.

“It’s meant a lot to Lincoln,” Burke said. “One of the real pushes is to give these rural kids opportunities to be involved in their own community.”

One month into the internship, Morgan said she’s learned a lot. She can now identify some noxious weeds, and knows how they’re monitored and controlled.

She can also identify white pine blister rust and dwarf mistletoe, two diseases damaging Montana forests. And she’s seen first hand the tell tale spruce bud worm caterpillars devastating the trees at Flesher Pass and many other areas of Montana.

She’s also measured a stream’s pollution index by studying its macroinvertebrates.

If 90 percent of the insects in the stream are mayflies, caddisflies and stoneflies, then the water is clean, she said.

However, if most of the creatures are leeches, black fly larvae, worms and midges, then the stream is less healthy.

“It’s really fun,” she said of the internship. “We get to enjoy ourselves.

Fellow intern Matt Horner, 15, has learned an array of skills. “I’m learning about the weeds. I didn’t know much about them. Toadflax is new for me,” he said.

He’s also measured stream temperature, sinuosity, conductivity, pH level and dissolved oxygen.

He gives the internship a thumbs up. “It’s given me a lot of information and I’ve gotten my foot in the door at the Forest Service.”

“It’s something to do. It’s better than sitting around, and it gets you in shape,” he said.

Another member of the Lincoln crew, 14-year-old Jasper Eshelman, has decided, “I’d really like to work on a trail crew.”

He’s learned a lot about streams and some new information about weeds. And, he’s really liked it when the group finishes its stream work and gets to go fishing.

By mid-afternoon the team will leave behind the toadflax, the 90-plus degree heat and the ubiquitous flies.

Returning to their cubbyhole in the basement of the Lincoln Ranger District office, the interns will transfer today’s field data into computers.

Later, they’ll run statistical tests on their data and present it in graphs and spreadsheets.

Their work is put into a folder that is passed on to future intern teams, who will study the sites in following years, Mannix said.

The Lincoln team will also present its findings and management recommendations Aug. 3, when the youth monitoring teams gather in Helena to give final reports.

And land managers listen to the students, said Mannix.

After one group reported grazing damage, Forest Service managers combined the students’ data with their own and decided to give the grazing area a rest.

While other national forests across the country give students opportunities to be in the field, Burke has found no other internship programs that offer such an in-depth opportunity for students to work in the forest, earn a stipend and learn about a variety of natural resource careers.

Program sponsors include the Helena National Forest; the Montana Discovery Foundation; Lewis and Clark, Jefferson and Powell counties; the Tri-County Resource Advisory Committee, made up of Deer Lodge, Granite and Powell counties; and the UM-Helena College of Technology.

Team presentations are Aug. 3 at 10:30 a.m. at the MACO Building, 2715 Skyway, near the Helena Regional Airport, and are open to the public.