For five weeks this summer, six teenagers arrived at the Northwest Youth Corps headquarters on Augusta Street in Eugene’s Laurel Hill neighborhood at 7:30 a.m..
Each morning, they piled into a Sprinter van packed with shovels, Hori Hori knives, and weed-wrenches and headed off to a work site, where they spent eight hours working with their hands and learning about ecological restoration.
Though summer break usually means sleeping in, these teens used their holiday to work as part of an Urban and Community Forestry crew for the Northwest Youth Corps, a Eugene-based organization that offers youth and young adult residential conservation programs in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Some programs have specific concentrations that change seasonally, like wildfire protection, backcountry leadership, and wilderness camping.
Urban and Community Forestry crew members are between the ages of 15-18 and are hired to work in developed parks and spaces around Eugene. At the end of the program, the teens receive a stipend and high school credit.
From June 23 to July 25, the crew cleared nonnative plant species, helped create resilient urban ecosystems, and collaborated as a team on hands-on projects.
“Everything we do feels impactful and makes a difference,” said Samma Ayala, who was on her second summer as a crew member. “A lot of the time it’s very satisfying work, because we can see a clear before and after.”
Last year, her crew mulched trees around the outskirts of the Valley River Center mall. Since then, each time she returns to the area and sees the mulch (and the lack of weeds), she feels proud of the work she did with Northwest Youth Corps.
“It’s hard work, but it’s so worth it,” Ayala said.
This summer, the crew pruned mutated cedar trees from greenhouses in Dorena, cleared dense vegetation, and removed weeds from rain gardens and bioswales around Eugene.
Rain gardens and bioswales are beds of plants built into the ground, often seen in parking lots. They are designed for soil to absorb and treat storm water before it enters waterways like the McKenzie River.
After help from the crew, Eugene rain gardens will be more effective at filtering pollutants from runoff water.
“When it rains, all this water is going to drain through to the river and or pond, and it won’t be killing off the Coho salmon that it has been killing off,” said crew member Jeremiah Bellinger.
It was Bellinger’s first summer working with the Northwest Youth Corps, and he said the experience has helped him grow into a more considerate leader– while learning more about the outdoors.
“I couldn’t ID a single plant before this and now I can ID at least twenty,” Bellinger said. “I learned that being more open with my team, just knowing that everybody around me can give me feedback about what we’re trying to do.”
The crew may have to wait until the rainy season in winter and spring to see their work in rain gardens pay off. But for now, they’re indirectly helping fuels reduction efforts this current fire season, said Sarah Worthington, program director of the Community Wildfire Protection Corps and the Eugene Urban Community Forestry Corps.
“They remove a lot of invasive species, which can catch fire really quickly,” she said.
Federal challenges
With cuts continually being made to the federal partners of Northwest Youth Corps, including the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, resources available for future programs may dwindle.
Multiple rounds of executive orders and layoffs at federal agencies have meant the Corps has had to scale back this summer’s field season “due to challenges with our federal partners,” said Peter Chesser, the External Affairs Officer for the organization. “Simply put, they have less people and more complicated processes, resulting in a slowing of the contracting and agreement process,” he said.
The Northwest Youth Corps also works closely with various state and local agencies, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Northwest Youth Corps offers youth conservation programs throughout the year. Applications for youth crew members and adult crew leaders are posted on their website, https://www.nwyouthcorps.org.
