Clare Hydock

Clare Hydock serves as a key procurement lead within the Csa Intermountain 2 USDA-FS, supporting the U.S. Forest Service’s mission to sustain ecological resilience and operational readiness across national forest lands. Responsible for managing specialized service acquisitions, she focuses on contracting solutions that directly support forest health, wildlife habitat management, and field-based resource operations. Her portfolio centers on equine-related services critical to remote land management, ensuring logistical and ecological objectives are met through compliant, mission-aligned procurements. Hydock’s work bridges field operational needs with federal acquisition regulations to deliver scalable, sustainable outcomes in challenging terrain. Her primary contractor relationship is with GONZALEZ FORESTRY INC., a trusted vendor with deep expertise in equine-assisted forest operations and ecological stewardship services. Hydock maintains a consistent, long-term partnership with this firm, leveraging its specialized capabilities in horse-mounted trail maintenance, invasive species control, and backcountry resource monitoring. These collaborations reflect a preference for contractors with proven on-the-ground experience in high-risk, low-access environments, emphasizing reliability, technical proficiency, and alignment with Forest Service protocols. Hydock exhibits a 100% commitment to small business set-asides under FAR 19.5, ensuring all eligible acquisitions are reserved exclusively for small businesses. This reflects a deliberate strategy to cultivate local, regionally-based vendors with niche capabilities in forest resource management. Her contracting patterns prioritize socioeconomic inclusion, consistently channeling opportunities to small businesses capable of delivering specialized equine and field services, reinforcing the agency’s broader goals of community engagement and economic development in rural forest-dependent regions. Her procurement focus is exclusively centered on NAICS 112920 (Horses and Other Equine Production), reflecting a specialized domain requiring unique operational knowledge. She procures services including horse-mounted patrols, equine-assisted wildfire support, trail construction and maintenance using pack animals, and habitat restoration efforts leveraging equine logistics. This technical specialization underscores her expertise in non-traditional, mission-critical procurement domains where mechanized equipment is impractical, and biological, low-impact methods are essential to ecological integrity.