Chelan discovered the Trust through a Whitman College internship with Mary O’Brien in the Utah Forests Program. She spent the summer of 2012 running around the forests measuring aspen and looking for beaver. Since working at the Trust, Chelan has graduated from Whitman College and fights fires on a Hotshot crew. She was inspired by the Trust’s effectiveness in public lands management and wants to use conservation strategies to re-introduce healthy fire ecologies in western forests.