August 14th, 2023 | Jacob Mandell, youth programs coordinator for Southwest Conservation Corps, said 29 local youths — mainly high schoolers — dedicated a total of 1,460 hours to work on the project. Aside from moving and reshaping heavy rocks weighing hundreds of pounds, the youth group helped create nine sets of stone stairs and 90 square feet of rockwall at Dalla Mountain Park.

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.”

April 17th, 2021 | “All of the seed was collected from the national forest,” said San Juan National Forest Columbine District Ranger James Simino. “We sent that seed to (the Charles E. Bessey Tree Nursery) that the Forest Service manages in Nebraska and they grew the trees out for us, and then we shipped them back down here to plant in the ground.”

March 31st, 2021 | When President Joe Biden announced a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, several groups in Colorado rejoiced as they crawled closer to a much needed increase in funding. Colorado has eight accredited Youth Corps organizations, and they could see a boost that would bring money, and, in turn, hire people for much needed projects throughout the state.

March 29, 2021 | A stretch of the Colorado Trail that runs through the Weminuche Wilderness is expected to be fixed by fall after a historic year for avalanches damaged the trail in 2019. Kristina Schenck, lead wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service’s Columbine Ranger District, said the winter of 2018-19 brought unprecedented avalanche activity to the San Juan Mountains.

February 25, 2021 | President Joe Biden’s executive order in January directing the federal government to create a Civilian Climate Corps marks the recognition of an existential threat we are facing on our planet.

In Colorado we are facing a new era of mega-fires, declining access to water, and other potentially devastating effects of climate change. President Biden’s executive order correctly calls this a “profound climate crisis” and seeks to broadly address climate change by putting Americans to work “restoring public lands and waters, increasing reforestation, increasing carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protecting biodiversity, improving access to recreation, and addressing the changing climate.”

November 13, 2020 | Sometimes when Southwest Conservation Crew 428 arrives at a sawyer job, crew members receive second looks from clients for carrying saws or wearing manual labor gear. At times, the client ends up looking for the man in charge.

“There’s definitely stereotypes and gender norms within this field,” said Cassie McCarty, a crew leader. “Even if they’re slight, they’re still there.”

Crew 428 is a team of all women and gender nonbinary individuals – the first of its kind for the SCC.

September 6, 2020 | Tech Gives Back, a fundraising effort, raised $300,000 for the Community Emergency Relief Fund’s efforts to combat food insecurity and support youth employment at local nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

August 31, 2020 | In late July, amidst alternating summer heat and afternoon monsoons, volunteers gathered to plant locally and regionally native plant species in southwestern Colorado. Housed at the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership (GGP) site in downtown Pagosa Springs, members from various groups (Weminuche Audubon Society, Mountain High Garden Club, CSU Extension Master Gardeners, and GGP) came together to install a Habitat Hero demonstration garden despite the current pandemic.

August 6, 2020| A unique partnership is addressing a home heating crisis on the Navajo and Hopi Nations, by supplying hundreds of cords of firewood from forest restoration projects.