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Wyoming Conservation Corps follows CCC legacy

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  • Originally published September 6, 2010 at 10 a.m., updated September 6, 2010 at 1:04 p.m.

CURT GOWDY STATE PARK, Wyo. (AP) - Generations after the Great Depression's Civilian Conservation Corps stamped its imprint on the nation's outdoors, thousands of young men and women are working in Wyoming and the West improving campgrounds, building fences and trails and fixing recreation facilities.

The West is a great attraction for modern-day conservation corps workers because of its expansive public lands, said Marty O'Brien, senior vice president of The Corps Network in Washington, D.C. The organization helps set up corps program around the country.

More than 29,000 people are doing corps work in 47 states, O'Brien said. In Wyoming, corps workers this summer cleared dead trees from campgrounds in the Medicine Bow National Forest.

"Without them, we would look to being in here in this campground probably a week to a week plus, and we can get this knocked out in three to four days now, instead," said David Heupel of the U.S. Forest Service in Laramie.

A corps crew replaced wooden benches at the Jenny Lake campfire circle in Grand Teton National Park. Others renovated historic buildings - some built by the original CCC - restored wetlands and built a biathlon trail.

Corps workers can earn college credit for a summer's work that pays $7,200 for crew leaders and $3,200 for crew members. Both are eligible for AmeriCorps scholarships. O'Brien said corps youth learn skills that can lead to careers as park rangers and conservationists.

"It's like the culmination of service learning," said Ali Fleck, a University of Wyoming student over the summer from Phoenix, Ariz., as she helped install a culvert crossing a trail in Curt Gowdy State Park west of Cheyenne. "You get to do service and you get to see the product of all your work."

The Wyoming Conservation Corps is run by the University of Wyoming. Its $550,000 budget this year is funded with public and private money.

"I always say that for a lot of folks, national service can be a way in and a way out," said Patrick Corvington, head of the government-run Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees service programs including AmeriCorps.

"It's a way out of a particular life that people may be looking for something new and a way in to a new kind of life, which is an opportunity to go to college, an opportunity to learn a set of skills, an opportunity to give back to a community," Corvington said.

In Wyoming, corps crews work on six 10-day projects over the summer. Crew leaders get extensive training in wilderness medical care and other skills in a UW class and oversee six workers who also get college credit. Applicants must be at least 18 and be able to lift at least 50 pounds.

Crews are equipped with four-wheel drive vehicles and enough supplies to sustain themselves in the field for up to 10 days, said Benjamin Bump, WCC senior project coordinator. A lot of work is done in remote Bureau of Land Management areas.

"You could be doing anything from stringing out barbed wire one day, to lifting extremely heavy logs the next day, to doing something with maybe more of a scientific end, maybe doing some data collection or some seed collection," Bump said.

A typical day begins at 5:30 a.m. for breakfast cooks. Workers generally call it a day at 5 p.m.

"Get a good 10-hour day in, come back and eat and whoever has enough energy after that hangs out by the fire," crew leader Phil Byrne of Geneva, Ill., said as he worked on a trail in Curt Gowdy State Park west of Cheyenne.

where workers used heavy stones to shore up a mountain bike trail among a stand of shimmering aspen trees.

___

Online:

Wyoming Conservation Corps: http://www.uwyo.edu/enr/wcc

Corporation for National and Community Service: http://www.nationalservice.gov/


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