Everything to do with trail maintenance, land stewardship, and protecting/educating hikers. The US Forest Service in this region of the state has been reduced to a single full-time ranger so they rely on volunteers for the bulk of the work.
just musing here, but was the revival of the conservation corps with americorps in the 90s a way to undermine professional conservation labor the same way teach for america was for teachers?
The CCC has always been a reserve army of labour, but with a focus on work that is so unprofitable that the market can’t reasonably do it without the same kind of private-public partnership that’s less efficient than just keeping it in house. Here Americorps is partnered with the county’s workforce development department and county-run conservation corps. HOAs in the mountains can afford to fund private foresters through their watershed coalitions, but my partner is a forester on a contract like that and their unpaid commute is 2 hours each way up and down mountain roads. There’s too much work for Americorps or the USFS to cover and even then the private work is so poorly paid that they’re making like $18/hr without benefits to do wildly dangerous shit.
Since you can’t even really get house insurance up there anymore, if not for Americorps a lot of people would probably take no mitigation efforts and just let their property burn. That’s like an antivaxxer coughing in a room full of immunocompromised people.
Everything to do with trail maintenance, land stewardship, and protecting/educating hikers. The US Forest Service in this region of the state has been reduced to a single full-time ranger so they rely on volunteers for the bulk of the work.
Cool work, shitty management. :(
just musing here, but was the revival of the conservation corps with americorps in the 90s a way to undermine professional conservation labor the same way teach for america was for teachers?
The CCC has always been a reserve army of labour, but with a focus on work that is so unprofitable that the market can’t reasonably do it without the same kind of private-public partnership that’s less efficient than just keeping it in house. Here Americorps is partnered with the county’s workforce development department and county-run conservation corps. HOAs in the mountains can afford to fund private foresters through their watershed coalitions, but my partner is a forester on a contract like that and their unpaid commute is 2 hours each way up and down mountain roads. There’s too much work for Americorps or the USFS to cover and even then the private work is so poorly paid that they’re making like $18/hr without benefits to do wildly dangerous shit.
Since you can’t even really get house insurance up there anymore, if not for Americorps a lot of people would probably take no mitigation efforts and just let their property burn. That’s like an antivaxxer coughing in a room full of immunocompromised people.