Ranger moves on to a bigger role as forestry educator

Published 12:43 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

NORTH BEND – Rudy Edwards has spent a lot of his life in the woods.

As a 27-year employee of the U.S. Forest Service who has spent the last 12 years as the head ranger of the North Bend station, Edwards has learned a lot from his trips into nature.

Now he wants to bring along youth and get them excited about nature as well.

“If you take a child to the museum and expose them to art, they will start to appreciate it,” Edwards said. “To me, going into nature is like going into a museum and looking at art.”

This week Edwards will bring that philosophy to his new position as the Puget Sound community liaison manager for the Forest Service’s sixth district. Edwards will be responsible for helping develop programs that will get children excited about science. The new position will hopefully help fill what Edwards and state education officials see as a gap in the achievement of minority students on state science tests. Edwards said he will be working with minority groups, such as the Urban League, to get students out in the woods and learning about the basics of science.

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