Conservation Corps youth take a break after a day of pulling buckthorn on National Park Service lands along the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, east of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Editor’s Note: This week Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis visited St. Paul Minnesota to sign an agreement with the National League of Cities and the YMCA to better coordinate efforts to get kids outdoors, as part of the Secretary’s youth initiative. This week we will highlight the additional efforts of an organization supporting the Secretary’s goals for her initiative in the Twin Cities area through the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps.
This summer, youth will play in vital role in helping to protect biodiversity and improve visitors’ experience along the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. The St. Croix River, with its proximity to the Twin Cities metropolitan area and federal designation as a Wild and Scenic River, is a popular outdoor recreation area for paddling, hiking, biking and birdwatching. Participants, ages 15-18, and young adult AmeriCorps members will work in crews of eight, along shoreline and public lands in this national park to remove invasive buckthorn and purple loosestrife that destroy native vegetation and critical habitat. Corpsmembers will also be involved with identifying and mapping threatened areas.
The St. Croix projects will engage a total of 60 diverse youth participants from Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa, a 21st Century Conservation Service Corps program operator, in partnership with the National Park Service. The projects will be completed over eight weeks of the 2014 the Summer Youth Corps program.