January 21, 2021 | In early May 2020, Conservation Legacy was asked to pilot an AmeriCorps Contact Tracing program. Their Stewards Individual Placement Program was awarded funding to launch a VISTA Summer Associate (VSA) program that became known as the Colorado Containment Response Corps. Facing the urgent need for contact tracers, Conservation Legacy had to scale up quickly. Over the course of three weeks, they hired twelve former Corpsmembers and staff to implement the program and, out of more than 1,100 applicants, recruited 143 VISTA members. The group was diverse, including displaced PeaceCorps members, retirees, college students, stay-at-home parents, and AmeriCorps alums.

January 24th, 2022 | Hear more about Rodney Flora's experience with the Traditional Trades Apprenticeship Program.

January 20th, 2022 | The 18 people spending their day (or days, in some cases) with the trees included civilians from all walks of life, members of the Arizona and Nevada Conservation Corps, and a group of women who brought along two pack camels to help carry baby Joshua trees through some of the more treacherous terrain. Joshua trees typically have a lifespan of 150 years; if all goes according to plan, these saplings will become a fixture of the preserve for a long, long time.

January 20th, 2022 | Asheville native and Western Carolina University grad Stephanie Dillingham is spending her time post graduation in Highlands serving the Highlands Cashiers Land Trust maintaining trails and organizing educational efforts through AmeriCorps.

January 18th, 2022 | Working for a conservation nonprofit during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown me how much we are like water. Like water, our society has had to adapt to fill the container we put ourselves in. We are in the midst of a pandemic, so we adapt by changing how we work, and changing how we view work too. We have adopted better systems for showing up, doing what we can with the resources we have, and changing plans to keep ourselves and our volunteers safe.

January 3rd, 2022 | There are two dangers inherent in trimming brush, and at the moment I am confronting both of them. The first is physical fatigue, the strains and overuse injuries stemming from bending too much from the back, from swinging too much with the wrist. The second is tedium, a side effect of bending and sweeping for hours in silence with little more than a stiff breeze and the chance of autumn rain for company. The first I mitigate by bending from the knees, using my core, drinking water. For the second, I attempt to create meaning out of monotony. I reach out with the loppers, clip a beech limb, bend to collect it from the ground, toss it into the undergrowth. Reach, clip, bend, toss. The motions build upon each other like waves, or maybe better, like tree rings, or the seasons that etch them into the cross section of each young tree I cut.

Dec 22, 2021 | After Bighorn burned almost 120,000 acres between June 5 and July 23, 2020, the Forest Service closed the burn scar area to the public including almost 207 miles of trails. A combination of nonprofit group work, grant-funded conservation corps, and Forest Service staff work has steadily opened more trail sections over the past year.

December 20th, 2021 | Working with the Forest Service, Tribal governments and communities, Ancestral Lands conservation corps, and other partners, we are connecting small diameter timber from restoration projects led by NFF and the Forest Service with Tribal partners who split the wood and provide it to elders and other community members.

November 29th, 2021 | “At the scale of things that we need to do, we can’t really address them just as an agency,” said Tim Leishman, a silviculturist with San Juan National Forest’s Columbine Ranger District. “We have to have groups like Mountain Studies Institute, San Juan Mountains Association, Southwest Conservation Corps and other groups really help us meet those goals.”

November 29th, 2021 | “These are designed to be sustainably-built, purpose-built horse trails, so they’re not just putting horse trails on old logging roads or ATV trails,” McIntyre continued. “It’s really considering the impact of horses because they have a different impact on trails than humans.”