Ronan NRCS Earth Team volunteer earns national award
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News from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
RONAN – Kristi D’Agati, Earth Team volunteer at the Ronan Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) field office, has been selected as the national Earth Team Volunteer of the Year for 2016. D’Agati has served with the Ronan office since Jan. 4, 2016. Through October, she had registered more than 1,100 hours of service.
In her time with NRCS, D’Agati has worked as a conservation planner and assisted in soil analysis, range monitoring and planning, pasture improvements, forestry inventory, and wetland analysis.
D’Agati’s work has focused on implementing field trials within Lake County in order to provide workable solutions to common, local, natural resource issues. The field trials that Kristi has implemented have been designed to provide local producers with low cost, commonsense, workable solutions that they can easily implement on their own operations. To date, Kristi has implemented five unique field trials on 12 different ranches. She has seeded 37 different plots totaling more than 90 acres. Ongoing monitoring and documentation will continue for multiple years.
“Producers are already implementing some of the practical knowledge that has been gained from these trials,” said Ben Montgomery, district conservationist at the Ronan NRCS field office. “Without Kristi’s involvement, none of these studies would have been possible. The value of these studies will be long-lived and will lay the groundwork for future works of conservation.”
D’Agati has also assisted with pollinator outreach, education, and habitat establishment. This has included community presentations and helping to develop more than 50 free pollinator planting mixes. The mixes will each seed an area of approximately 1,500 square feet and will provide a diversity of pollinator gardens within Lake County.
In March, 2016, D’Agati and three other Earth Team volunteers assisted in restoring a stretch of stream on a Wetland Reserve Easement (WRE) in Lake County by planting more than 200 willow cuttings. In addition, she has monitored vegetation and assisted in revegetating WREs in Lake County with pollinator-friendly mixtures.
D’Agati has coordinated with multiple NRCS partners including the Lake County Conservation District, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), and the Flathead Lakers to complete conservation works and increase local partnering opportunities. She partnered with Montana FWP to develop and carry out monitoring protocols for vegetative improvement and restoration projects on public lands in Lake County.
D’Agati’s future plans include attending graduate school to pursue a career in soil science.
“We can only hope that one day Kristi will return to NRCS with the same level of passion and endearing commitment toward the betterment of our nation and its natural resources,” says Montgomery. “Her work will provide a lasting legacy not only for the Ronan office, but for the entirety of Lake County and surrounding communities.”
