Secretary Sally Jewell Visits Northwest Youth Corps as Part of National Park Week

Last weekend, in recognition of National Park Week, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell visited Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. She also met with Corpsmembers and staff from Northwest Youth Corps. Read about it here.

Written by Amelia Templeton
OPB – Oregon Public Broadcast

Secretary of Interior Jewell Sees Signs of Drought at Crater Lake

Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell visited Crater Lake National Park this weekend, celebrating National Park Week.

Jewell went snowshoeing at the crater rim with students from the Network Charter School in Eugene. Jewell said she was impressed at how passionate the Eugene students were about conservation.

“They were terrific. I mean really poetic. Not just talking about National Parks, but talking about our lands, and how we use our lands and need to be more thoughtful about things we extract as opposed to conservation,” she said.

Jewell also met with a Northwest Youth Corps work crew. She said she was struck by the signs of climate change and drought she saw in the park. Read more

Earth Day 2014


EarthCorps Corpsmembers “spread some Earth Month love” with students.

A Roundup of Earth Day News

Wendy Spencer, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, writes about green service opportunities in an op-ed for the Huffington Post. In the very first paragraph she mentions none other than Mike Bremer, a 2012 Corpsmember of the Year.

Like many transitioning service members, Mike Bremer was having a tough time finding work after he came home. Then he joined AmeriCorps, serving on the all veterans fire team with the Southwest Conservation Corps. With the skills he learned, Mike was able to secure a job with the U.S. Forest Service as a full-time firefighter. Read more

Watch an Earth Day video chat with Mike Connor, recently confirmed Deputy Secretary of the Interior (P.S. tune in at 2:35 to hear a question submitted by Harry Bruell, CEO and President of Conservation Legacy, and jump to 28:35 to hear a question from Levi Novey, Director of Communications and Marketing at The Corps Network).

A few highlights of Corps Earth Day projects…


EarthCorps
The entire month of April is Earth Month for EarthCorps. In total, they will host 22 events and mobilize more than 1,800 community volunteers in habitat restoration in community parks and green spaces.  Events will take place in the cities of Seattle, Everett, Mercer Island, Federal Way, and Tacoma. Activities mostly include invasive species removal. 

 


Kupu – Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps
On April 19th, volunteers with Kupu removed marine debris from Oahu’s dirtiest beach. Kahuku Beach has more plastic than any other shoreline on Oahu.

 


New York Restoration Project – NYRP
New York Restoration Project planted trees in Astoria park on April 22nd.


American YouthWorks – Texas Conservation Corps
In the days leading up to Earth Day, a Corps Network-AmeriCorps crew from the Texas Conservation Corps teamed up with a neighborhood group and Boy Scout troop to install a new trail through a native prairie landscape in a historic central city park and museum in Austin, Texas.  The new 300 foot accessible trail at the Ney Museum was built by the Corpsmembers using native materials, including a natural plant-based stabilizer that created a more accessible and erosion resistant trail.  The trail will be quickly put to use to interpret the natural history of Central Texas to the thousands of school children and other visitors who tour the historic site each year.

 


Western Colorado Conservation Corps – WCCC
On April 11th, Western Colorado Conservation Corps generated 87 volunteer hours doing rockwork on the Tabeguache Trails System. Putting in place large rocks to deter mountain bikers, the volunteers created a connector trail specifically for hikers. This is one of the first trails of its kind in the area. In total, the crew constructed 200 feet of new trail, 2 retaining walls, 2 staircases and 1 armored section of trail.

“It’s awesome that we were able to move two ton rocks and disguise it like nothing happened,” said Chi Yun Takaki, an Assistant Crew Leader.

 


Youth Conservation Corps – YCC
Youth Conservation Corps spent the day “greening” their location in Waukegan, IL.  They built raised beds, filled them with soil and compost, and then planted them with flowers and vegetables. They also planted native prairie grasses around the building, along with bushes and other plants. 

 

New Jersey Youth Corps Participates in HOPE Crew Volunteer Day at Historic Stadium

Written by Michael Muckle, Executive Director of the New Jersey Youth Corps of Phillipsburg.

Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey is a historic 10,000-seat municipal stadium built from 1931–32 on a dramatic escarpment above Paterson’s National Historic Landmark Great Falls. It is one of only a handful of stadiums surviving nationally that once played host to significant Negro league baseball during America’s Jim Crow era. The stadium was designated as a National Historic Landmark in March 2013 and a Paterson Historic Landmark in May 2013.

On April 16th, under the guidance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Hands-On Preservation Experience HOPE Crew program, New Jersey Youth Corps of Phillipsburg & of Paterson, along with hundreds of other volunteers, helped paint Hinchliffe Stadium as part of the venues’ National Historic Landmark Dedication Ceremony. Over the years the stadium has hosted all types of sporting events, from baseball, boxing, wrestling…even auto racing! We were honored to be part of history and look forward to following the progress and eventual return of this historic venue to its former glory! More photos below.  #SaveHinchliffe  

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Volunteer Opportunities with Members of The Corps Network on Earth Day 2014

Arizona

ACE – American Conservation Experience

Location Flagstaff, AZ
Willow Bend Environmental Education Center
703 E Sawmill Rd, Flagstaff, AZ 86001
Date/Time Saturday April 19th / 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Contact Brad Hunter, [email protected]
Project Description Building new rainwater harvesting structure at Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. Volunteers will be engaged in digging holes, moving rocks, and spreading wood chips in creating this new structure. 

 

California

California Conservation Corps

   
   
   
   

 

   
   
   
   

 

   
   
   
   

Colorado

Western Colorado Conservation Corps 

Location Grand Junction, CO
 
   
   
   

 

Hawaii

Minnesota

Maine

Maryland

Oregon

Texas

Arizona Conservation Corps is Born: Coconino Rural Environment Corps and Southwest Conservation Corps Sonoran Desert Office become Arizona Conservation Corps

Southwest Conservation Corps Sonoran Desert Office (SCC) and the Coconino Rural Environment Corps (CREC) have recently joined forces as Arizona Conservation Corps (AZCC). 

Additionally, Southwest Conservation Corps has created Conservation Legacy – a new parent organization that will continue to operate the SCC program out of Colorado, the AZCC program, Environmental Stewards, a VISTA Team and Southeast Youth Corps. 
 


 

“We are confident and already seeing signs of our organization being much stronger as one in Arizona,” said Rob Spath, AZCC Executive Director. “We will continue to operate two offices (Tucson and Flagstaff) with many satellite programs in the White Mountains, the Greater Phoenix area, Cottonwood and Safford.  We will also continue to support programming in Southern New Mexico and Southern Utah.  And most importantly, we will be offering up the same, if not better, programs and services.”

 

Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa Enhances Trails in American Gothic Town


Photo: Iowa corps members Sara Anderson and Derek Bean pose in front of
the famed American Gothic house in Eldon, Iowa

From the Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa newsletter – April 11, 2014

In mid-March, an Iowa crew cleared brush from a creek edge to enhance a trail running through the city of Eldon, Iowa, famous for the Grant Wood painting, “American Gothic.” They had a little fun while on site!

Utah Conservation Corps Featured in Nature Conservancy Magazine Cover Story about Escalante River Watershed Partnership

In their most recent magazine, The Nature Conservancy chose to make their feature story about their work with a broader group of partners, known as the Escalante River Watershed Partnership. The partnership is working to protect the Escalante River in southeast Utah. 

The cover of the magazine shows a Utah Conservation Corps AmeriCorps member, and within the article other Corpsmembers are quoted and shown in photos. Several other Corps have been involved with restoration efforts and joint trainings for the Escalante and Dolores Rivers, including Southwest Conservation Corps, Canyon Country Youth Corps, and Western Colorado Conservation Corps. Crews from the Corps are specifically helping to eradicate non-native Russian olive and tamarisk trees along the river. These invasive tree species thrive in poor soil and outcompete native plant species, damaging the river’s ecosystems. Late last year, The Nature Conservancy presented an award to several Corps for their work on the Dolores River, where restoration projects are also underway.

In addition to reading the article, you can watch a video about the partnership produced by The Nature Conservancy.

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CCC Corpsmember writes about National Geographic BioBlitz at Golden Gate Parks


CCC members with John Griffith and Outdoor Afro’s Rue Mapp at Golden Gate National Parks
 

The California Conservation Corps Teams up with National Geographic and The Golden Gate Parks Conservancy for The Bioblitz Event!

 

By Kevin Casbeer
Corpsmember – California Conservation Corps, Ukiah

On March 28th and 29th 2014, I was one of the corps members from the Ukiah and Napa Centers who had the amazing opportunity to be a part of this year’s National Geographic BioBlitz at Golden Gate Parks! Being able to see kids involved with hands-on science projects and collecting biological data was truly inspiring for a young adult like me. After doing research on what exactly what “nature deficit disorder” was, I felt obligated to help out in whatever way I can to reconnect kids with nature. The Bioblitz Event was the perfect opportunity! In an age where our kids are attached to technology, it was refreshing to see the creative minds of park rangers, school teachers, musicians, and a crew supervisor from the California Conservation Corps hard at work to engage kids outdoors. It would be a dream of mine to follow in these footsteps and inspire a movement of sustainability and appreciation for nature in my community.

The National Geographic’s BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, and other organisms as possible. National Geographic is helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different national park each year during the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service Centennial in 2016. The event is accompanied by a Biodiversity Festival where the public watched stage performances and visited interactive and environmentally themed booths. This is where the CCC came in. We went onstage at the festival to talk to kids about our experiences as corps members and dance. Yes, dance… more on that soon.  

Since joining the California Conservation Corps (CCC) in January of 2013, the most rewarding volunteer trips I have been on were the ones where kids were involved. It is important to make sure that at the vital time of a child’s development, kids think of the outdoors as a place they belong. A dream of mine would be able to teach kids in a hybrid style, using both nature and technology as was done at the Bioblitz Event. Kids were teamed up with biologists and used a phone application called iNaturalist to catalogue the plant and animal species they discovered. The app iNat is easy to understand, and with it, anybody with a smart-phone or tablet can contribute to science while out in nature.

But not every child is blessed to have a smart phone and a backyard. So how do you engage kids who have little access to green spaces and expensive technologies to care about nature? Simple, you can start by advocating for green spaces in your city, access to those spaces, and for experiences that make nature both educational and entertaining. Not to mention, getting the word out that kids can join the CCC when they turn 18. Sounds easy, but I experienced firsthand the hard work and dedication it takes to make this happen.

 


Watch CCC members do the Bioblitz dance
 

In addition to speaking to the kids at the Bioblitz Event about our CCC experiences, we also did the Bioblitz Dance.  John Griffith, CCC crew supervisor, known dancer, and author of the kids’ book Totem Magic: Going MAD, had the spectacular idea to create a dance that had one rule. That rule was that the dance had to be done outdoors. So he created what became the official BioBlitz Dance. It’s still spreading like wildfire on the internet and was very popular at the event itself! In fact, the CCC’s Bioblitz Dance was the grand finale of the event’s opening ceremony. Repeated onstage Bioblitz Dance performances were accompanied by dozens of middle-grade students, a National Park Ranger, Beth Pratt National Wildlife Federation’s California Director, and NWF’s mascot–a giant raccoon known as Ranger Rick. I will never forget the kids’ reactions to our dance. And I was amazed by how many already knew how to do it by watching our YouTube video, and that they also knew the one rule to the Bioblitz Dance: it must be done outdoors. It is these types of tiny seeds (experiences) being planted in childhoods that will spark the growth of stewardship for nature. Less than a month after we made the Bioblitz Dance video, we’ve had nine Bioblitz Dance video responses from outdoors groups all over the nation–and even one from Romania.

Events like the National Geographic’s BioBlitz connect kids (and corps members) to nature in a relevant way: they get to be citizen scientists. We all should strive to apart of this movement to reconnect kids to nature. (I think that is what the CCC does for young adults.) If we can edu-tain kids about nature, whether it be by rapping, dancing, using iNat to help scientists, or just engaging kids to play outdoors (and become corps members), then maybe we can ensure that there will be future stewards to care for the wild long after our generation has passed.

Special thanks to Rue Mapp of Outdoor Afro and Michelle O’Herron of the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy for getting the CCC involved in the Bioblitz Event. –Kevin Casbeer

 Here is a quote I love from Richard Louv who coined the phrase Nature deficit Disorder: “Developers and environmentalists, corporate CEOs and college professors, rock stars and ranchers may agree on little else, but they agree on this: no one among us wants to be a member of the last generation to pass on to our children the joy of playing outside in nature.” 

National Journal “Next America” Education Poll

Watch a video of the event

Photo highlights 

On Tuesday, April 8, 2014, staff from The Corps Network attended the third event in National Journal’s Next America series. Titled “Points of Leverage,” the event brought together government officials, educators, workforce experts and analysts to discuss when intervention is most effective in a young person’s education.  

As stated by National Journal:

Minority children are projected to comprise a majority of the K-12 population within this decade, and minority workers projected to provide all of the net increase in the workforce through 2030. As a result, many agree that increasing the skills and educational attainment of young, non-white people looms as one of the most pressing challenges to American competitiveness.

In an era of slow economic growth and tight public budgets, there remains considerable disagreement about not only the kind of intervention, but also the timing of intervention most likely to produce success. In other words, with limited dollars to spend, what is the point in the lifecycle of students and young workers where we can invest in them for the greatest return?

Panelists at the event tended to agree that early intervention (pre-K or early elementary school) is best, but there are still many things educators can do for underserved middle school and high school students to put them on the track to postsecondary success. These things include:

  • Educating students about the range of career possibilities 
    – Many educators agreed that students simply were not aware of career possibilities outside of what they had been exposed to in their own community or through popular culture
  • Providing materials about local colleges and other higher-ed institutions
  • Covering the cost of college application fees
  • Providing a mentor who can connect a young person with their future
    – Many students do not know anyone who has gone to college or completed some kind of alternative post-secondary program.
  • Helping students overcome self-discrimination

The event also featured a presentation by College Board, summarizing the results of a recent poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, about Americans’ opinions about education and the value of college. The survey included responses from 1,271 diverse adults age 18 + from March 18th – 26th of this year. Click here to read the findings.  

Mary Ellen’s Blog: The Next Generation of Historic Preservationists

April 7, 2014

By now, many of us who are familiar with the conservation world have heard the numbers:  as of 2012, a full 38% of the Department of the Interior’s workforce, 35% of the Department of Agriculture’s workforce and 25% of the Bureau of Land Management’s workforce became eligible for retirement, and these numbers only continue to grow. Fortunately, every day thousands of young people across the country learn about conservation and develop green skills through Service and Conservation Corps programs. By providing teens and young adults the opportunity to serve outdoors, Corps foster the growth of America’s next – and more diverse – generation of environmental stewards.  

 By training the future protectors of our natural spaces, Corps help ensure that our parks and waterways are preserved for generations of American’s to enjoy. Now, through The Corps Network’s partnership with The National Trust for Historic Preservation, Corps will also help ensure that America’s historic buildings, neighborhoods and landscapes will also be preserved for future generations. 

Right now, Corpsmembers with the first Hands On Preservation Experience (HOPE) Crew are working alongside preservation experts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Service to restore the Skyland Stable at Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. At the completion of this project, the newly-repaired 1930’s stable will connect the public to over 200 miles of equestrian trails, and the first HOPE Crew cohort will be trained in craft skills and important preservation techniques.   

The Skyland Stable restoration project is just the beginning: the goal is to complete 100 HOPE Crew projects throughout the country by 2016. Working with the Trust, the Park Service and private funders, members of The Corps Network will have the opportunity to engage their Corpsmembers in the preservation of structures and places that are important to the history of our country.

Corps already provide much needed help in addressing the billions of dollars of backlogged maintenance work in our national, state and local parks. HOPE Crews represent another way that Corps will make a real and lasting impact on the places that define our communities. For decades, Corps have helped young people gain skills in land and water management. They have helped Corpsmembers understand and appreciate our connection with the natural world. It’s exciting to know that now, by serving in HOPE Crews alongside craft professionals, Corpsmembers will also gain skills in historic preservation and learn the importance of our connection with the past. I’m excited to be a part of the Corps movement as Corps play a larger role in developing not only the next generation of conservationists, but also the generation of preservationists.