News

Pitching tents, digging latrines, wielding a chainsaw, and traveling by smokejumper plane were all part of a typical work day this past summer for Olivia Lawrence, Wittenberg University class of 2023, as she participated in the first-ever all-women c ...

While federal legislation to create a modern-day Civilian Conservation Corps inches its way through Congress, the Cook County Forest Preserve is moving full steam ahead with programs that deploy crews of youth and adults to tackle ...

While federal legislation to create a modern-day Civilian Conservation Corps inches its way through Congress, the Cook County Forest Preserve is moving full steam ahead with programs that deploy crews of youth and adults to tackle restoration and mai ...

REVISED – (Chinle, AZ) July 29, 2022 – The Student Conservation Association (SCA) confirmed that on the afternoon of July 27th, a Student Conservation Association (SCA) crew leader, drove a vehicle into the mouth of the Canyon de Chelly National ...

Mobile’s GulfCorps program is like boot camp … but for the environment. Mobile’s GulfCorps conservation program aims to restore coastal habitats along the Gulf Coast while creating jobs for local young adults and launching them into their ...

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Several members of the Wolf Administration visited with crew members of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Corps Youth Crew during its first week at Reservoir Park in Harrisburg.  Created under the Wolf administration, the program ...

“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” This is one of my favorite quotes because I spent so much of my life second-guessing myself about everything. My interest in the green industry started early when attending Essex Agricul ...

The Adirondack Park just got bigger. The previous landowners of the park’s new land, located on the south side of Moxham Mountain, left the area undeveloped, so the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the&nbs ...

I grew up native to northeastern Pennsylvania. Throughout this time, I developed many memorable moments in the outdoors. After I graduated college, I found myself moving to Arizona for a year to experience a change of pace. It was here where I first ...

Tribal-led conservation helps revive an ancient fish in Wenatchee River By Sarah Ortiz, Student Conservation Association internOn an overcast afternoon, I find myself hauling bins to the banks of the Wenatchee River with fellow biologists. I struggl ...

by Clayton Rudiger, SCA Intern“I thought there would be more wildflowers” the woman said, four miles into her two-day through-hike of the Crow Pass Trail. Visiting from the lower 48, she didn’t know that if she had started her hike a week prior ...

A pilot project at Ohiopyle State Park has members of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Corps sifting through dirt, looking for items of cultural significance in advance of a campsite expansion.The cultural resource crew has been working for the past week in ...

Hunter Potchen, 8, has picked up "a lot of garbage" since he started cleaning up the Deep River at just 5 years old. Then last year, after Potchen recruited the Shirley Heinze Land Trust to help with his mission, the project grew. "I w ...

CHICAGO, Nov. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chi-Cal Rivers Fund partners today announced six projects selected to receive $1.2 million in grant funding to improve and enhance waterways in the Chicago-Calumet region. These investments will protect and ...

A $7 million restoration project spawned in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill is expanding.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the RESTORE Council have announced they will spend ...

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos announced today the completed restoration and improvement of an accessible trail at Stony Kill Farm Environmental Education Center in Wappingers Falls, Dutchess C ...

The Student Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting environmental education, and the U.S. Forest Service sponsored the Southern Region’s first-ever Roving Forest Management Corps, a young adult crew caring for the ...

This past summer, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge saw the benefit from four additional trail crews provided by the Student Conservation Association.They added 1.4 miles of trail to the already existing 0.9 miles of the trail. Previous SCA crews bu ...

By Ernesto PazSCA Crew MemberFifty miles southwest of Chicago, hiding in plain sight, sits a time machine.Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is one of the last remaining ecosystems of its kind, offering a glimpse of the landscape that defined the Mid ...

Forty American flags stood tall and the sound of bagpipes rang out on State Game Lands 93 in Somerset County as the Pennsylvania Game Commission rededicated a memorial to honor the 40 heroic passengers and crew members of United Airlines Flight 93.Th ...

This summer the Chippewa National Forest was fortunate to host a group of Student Conservation Association (SCA) interns. SCA is an organization created by Liz Putnam, who modeled it based on the Civilian Conservation Corp model. The basic concept wa ...

Richard Guadagno was the Refuge Manager at the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was passenger 19A on flight 93, the plane that crashed in an open field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The Wildlife Re ...

Roberta Royce’s excitement was palpable as she walked along a nearly finished boardwalk, pointing to the things she loved — three tall willow trees, a swath of cattails, a small brook tumbling over rocks.“We have a resident deer who’s made a ...

After months of planning, coordination and a lot of patience, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Fort Hood’s Natural Resources Branch have successfully monitored and filmed a black-capped vireo nest.On April 7, Sydney Dragon, a Student Conserva ...

It was March 16 of 2019 when I first heard of the ecological phenomenon known as a “super bloom,” an event that draws thousands to the desertscape of California.Spurred by heavy winter rains and snow, a super bloom is a higher-than-normal growth ...

The 297-acre Big Marsh Bike Park on Chicago’s Southeast Side draws herons, egrets, and mallards to its wetlands, coyotes and deer to its meadows, and riders to its bike trails. But as one of the park’s natural environment workers, Luis Cabrales i ...

By Dakota SpringerThe thing about poison ivy – aside from the obvious, of course – is once you know what it looks like, you can’t not see it.Like a lot of things in life.I learned to identify the itch-inducing plant as well as many others this ...

As a child, being outdoors was a huge part of my life. Some of my favorite memories are those in nature with the people I love. These memories included canoeing with my dad, fishing for bluegill with my grandfather, or even going to environmental edu ...

The Student Conservation Association (SCA) has returned to the Cold River stretch of the Mohican-Mohawk hiking trail. A joint effort last November, with the Berkshire Natural Resources Council and the Manice Education Center, reopened the trail, whic ...

Five students from four Atlanta-area high schools have completed a month-long internship maintaining trails and greenspace in the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area and other sites around Atlanta.The Student Conservation Association (SCA) paid in ...

During 2020, record numbers of visitors came to Madera Canyon to enjoy the trails, nature and a little time away from all things COVID-19. The additional foot traffic further eroded the canyon’s most popular trails.The non-profit Friends of Madera ...

Climate Action = Climate Justice, Says SCA SVP The fight against climate change may be taking a striking new turn under the Biden administration. The White House is calling climate action a form of environmental justice, part of a campaign to a ...

SCA prescribed fire crews along the Gulf coast just closed an amazing season in which they burned more than 132,000 acres – an area almost as large as the entire city of Mobile, AL – in less than five months! If you’re not familiar, prescr ...

By Chambers English, SCA Forest Technician InternSmoke trails behind me as I hike up the next drain along Falling Creek at Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge. Drip torch in hand, I paint a ribbon of fire near the ecotone of hardwoods and pines as the ...

Members of NPCA’s Next Generation Advisory Council shine a spotlight on young leaders around the country who are making a difference in conservation. Safe, equitable access to our public lands plays an important role in our physical, mental an ...

Trees can do plenty of good, environmentally, economically, and even emotionally. All it takes is someone to plant, trim, and maintain them.For Arbor Day and Earth Day, the Student Conservation Association partnered with CommuniTree to plant about 50 ...

The SC Governor’s School for Agriculture at John de la Howe (JDLH) and the Francis Marion & Sumter National Forests (FMS) have more than a few things in common - first, Agriculture, and second, they have a passion to educate and mentor the yout ...

The Hilton Effect Foundation announced today its 2020 Hilton Effect grantees. Through these grants and donations already made by the Foundation, which serves as Hilton’s primary philanthropic arm, the Foundation has now awarded more than ...

A five-person Student Conservation Association (SCA) crew recently constructed some new amenities on the Tooley Pond Conservation Easement in the Town of Clare in Saint Lawrence County.The team built a primitive campsite on the Allen Pond Trail, comp ...

The view of Voyageurs National Park bursting in fall colors from a new scenic overlook wowed a couple last week. And they would not have experienced it without the work of youth crews who created the trail that lead to it."We've been coming here for ...

At 4:00 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 18, the Turkey Path was opened to the public for the first time since last Thanksgiving.This popular out and back hiking trail is on a steep slope that descends 800 feet to the bottom of the gorge where Pine Creek flows ...

Starting their service earlier this summer, SCA members Maryam Bledsoe and Kelly Escarcega are stewards of Big Marsh and other natural areas in the Calumet Region. Friends of Big Marsh Executive Director, Paul Fitzgerald, recently met with Marya ...

by Felice Yarbough, Urban Park Ranger, Houston, TexasAdjusting to life during a global pandemic has forced us to think even more creatively than before, in an effort to continue fulfilling the mission of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. The FWS’s ...

Since the end of May, a group of dedicated volunteers has been combing the beaches at NAS Patuxent River trying to learn and document what they can about the installation’s Northern Diamondback Terrapin population and their nesting habitat.Pax Rive ...

LETCHWORTH STATE PARK, NY (WKBW-TV — When the COVID crisis put a damper on live programming at Letchworth State Park, Conrad Baker went into action on the internet. He started producing "Nature Detectives" segments on Facebook. Conrad, who gre ...

by Sally Jewell and Ken SalazarAmong mountain trails and city parks in our home states of Colorado and Washington, we have gratefully found refuge in nature amid this global pandemic. Never has fresh air tasted so good as now, when it provides escape ...

By Stephanie MeeksDespite recent upticks in hirings, double-digit unemployment and a slumping U.S. economy have many drawing parallels to the Great Depression and calls for a new Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), part of President Roosevelt’s ...

By Jay Watson and Bruce Saito The outdoors is having a moment in Congress, demonstrating bipartisan support for using public lands as a stimulus for economic recovery. The Senate has passed the landmark Great American Outdoors Act, which wo ...

Teenager Xander Hill was bummed about his summer. This spring, it looked like he’d miss out on his favorite job: being a lifeguard at Shaler’s Crawford Swimming Pool.Then, last month during a family dinner, his mom exclaimed from across the table ...

“Don’t mind that sound,” said Liz Putnam. “It’s only my bird clock chirping away.”Late last month, the recorded call of a yellow warbler signaled the start of an introductory phone conversation between SCA’s founder and its just-appoint ...

This 50th Earth Day is unlike any other and Katie Wareham is celebrating in similarly unique fashion: she’s exiting a self-imposed 14-day quarantine.But before we get to the end, let’s start at the beginning.Katie, a 23-year old from Frederick, M ...

by Jenny Blanchard, BLM At the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Anchorage Field Office, we are responsible for managing 23 million acres of land in western Alaska. This land is almost all roadless, making any archaeological fieldwork challenging. Wi ...