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Opportunities for Students through the
Student Conservation Association
Do you like to work outdoors? Explore new places and meet new challenges? Then you might want to become an intern with the Student Conservation Association (SCA) working on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Bureau of Land Management has teamed up with SCA to offer exciting opportuntjeis in a number of fields, including fire and invasive plant education. You don't have to be an expert – we'll train you!
Once you're in college, you are eligible to apply for an SCA position putting your outdoor knowledge, skills and interests to work. Internships can be as long as a year or as short as three months. You will be provided housing and a small stipend. Oh, and an experience of a lifetime!
Fire Education Corps
If you like working with people and are interested in learning about fire, consider joining the Fire Education Corps. If accepted into this elite corps, you will be a member of a special team made up of college students and graduates. You will undergo special fire education training at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. You will then be deployed to one of a number of cities or towns in the "Wildland Urban Interface," where the city meets the wildland. Your assignment: to teach homeowners how to protect their communities from wildfire. You also may get to work on other projects such as erosion control, replanting and trail repair.
Leonard Wehking, a BLM fire management officer in Carson City, Nevada, called his interns from this program "local heroes" for getting out into the community to teach about fire. Due to the success of this program, BLM is expanding the number of teams for the 2002 Fire Season to six at these locations: Elko, Carson City, Reno, and Las Vegas, Nev.; Folsom, Calif.; and Prineville, Ore. SCA Fire Corps partners also include the Forest Service, Park Service, BIA, and several states. These partnerships will bring the total number of Fire Corps teams across all agencies from nine in 2001 to 32 in 2002. More than 230 team members are expected to participate. Next year, we will expand this program further, so get your applications in! If you are interested in these or additional opportunities, check out the SCA website at www.sca-inc.org or contact Rick Covington of the Student Conservation Association at 510-832-1966.
Invasive Plant Education Corps
If fire isn't your thing, how about teaching people about invasive plants? Read on to learn what SCA interns have accomplished so far. Interns at Fort Ord, California, conducted a comprehensive community education and outreach program that included developing a web-based weed curriculum for teachers. They made direct contact with more than 2,400 people in the community, supervised more than a dozen volunteer days, and conducted field trips and classroom presentations for 28 schools and other community and youth groups. A project in Cody, Wyoming, reported similar accomplishments and received a lot of news coverage in the community and in the State for their work.
BLM is expanding this program in 2002-2003 to include Idaho, where the SCA and BLM are working with the Forest Service on a weed internship program in the Frank Church Wilderness. SCA interns for both the Forest Service and BLM are working together to provide education to local communities and to recreationists in the tri-state area of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The SCA also has expanded its education work on weeds, originally initiated by BLM, to the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon. And an additional program is starting up in Salem, Oregon, in 2002. There, BLM is placing SCA interns to work on weed issues for the Willamette Basin Restoration Initiative, of which the Forest Service and many other federal, state and local agencies, are members.
We are expecting these programs to continue to grow, so don't be left out! If you are interested in these or additional opportunities, check out the SCA website at www.sca-inc.org or contact Rick Covington of the Student Conservation Association at 510-832-1966.
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