What Could a Civilian Climate Corps Look Like in Moab? Past and Present Conservation Work Offers Insight

Spencer Erickson is bent over a chainsaw in the Scott and Norma Matheson Wetlands Preserve in Moab. His enemy: invasive Russian Olive trees.

SPENCER ERICKSON: They’re giant, gnarly, thorny looking trees. Yeah, they don’t die. You just got to keep treating them.

Erickson is a member of the Utah Conservation Corps. He’s from Pennsylvania. And getting to stand in these wetlands with a chainsaw is kind of why he joined.

ERICKSON: Yeah, I just kind of wanted to get back into like the field. I was doing some bartending and stuff, but I just wanted to get back into like the outdoor world and making the world a little bit better.

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Jake Deslauriers (far right) is the projects and partnership coordinator for the Utah Conservation Corps. He says their work could dovetail with a future Civilian Climate Corps.

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In the program he’s met people from around the country. And he’s learned about Utah’s unique ecology.

ERICKSON: You know, how the Utah landscape is supposed to kind of work and function. It’s kind of interesting to be out here and understand ecosystem a lot better. How things… [are] supposed to function and how they aren’t necessarily always exactly how they should be.

Jake Deslauriers is the projects and partnership coordinator for the Utah Conservation Corps. He says the group’s mission is pretty broad.

JAKE DESLAURIERS: We do just about anything. Our mission is to develop the conservation leaders of tomorrow. We do that through field crews and individual placements.

They do things like riparian restoration, fuels reduction, mapping and trail work.

DESLAURIERS: Anything that natural resource agencies need, we will put crews out to do in hopes that [in] the next generation, there’ll be some highly trained individuals to go take those jobs and continue the efforts.

While this state’s conservation corps was created in 2001, it’s a distant relative of the nation’s Civilian Conservation Corps. That New Deal program was only open to single men between the ages of 18 and 25. Over two million men planted billions of trees and developed hundreds of state and national parks. Neil Maher is an historian who has written about the CCC. 

NEIL MAHER: You have to remember that first of all, the public saw it as an absolute success. It was probably the most popular New Deal program of all. It took these young men who were often undernourished and sort of unemployed and it took them and it rejuvenated them through manual labor outdoors and American nature.

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UCC Moab crews partnered with Seekhaven Family Crisis & Resource Center for the National Day of Service and Remembrance of September 11th. Service projects focused on removal of non-native grasses, shrubs, and trees on the property, creating a more natural, clean, and peaceful space for clients and staff. Credit Utah Conservation Corps

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Around Moab, the CCC helped build Arches National Park. Workers housed in Dalton Wells stimulated the local economy. 

MAHER: All that said there were serious problems with the program. Environmentally, some of their work, destroyed ecosystems and was damaging to the environment.

They drained swamps and planted monocultures and spread invasive species. 

A week after coming to office, President Biden signed an executive order creating something called the Civilian Climate Corps. Although details are slim, the new group will focus on mitigating climate change.

MAHER: In that sense, he understands that the new program will have to really listen to scientists. Whereas in the 1930s, sometimes the program did not listen to those ecologists.

It will also focus on environmental justice, which doesn’t only happen in the wilderness. And it’ll be inclusive -­­– not just relying on single young men.

For this to work, Maher thinks it can’t be controlled from Washington like the CCC. Local communities should have a say in the projects.

MAHER: Otherwise, if it’s still top down, you’re going to still have a lot of the inequalities that played out in the 1930s.

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A UCC Cedar City crew working with the Bureau of Land Management in St. George, planting Shivwits Milk-Vetch and Dwarf Bear Poppy – both endangered species. Credit Utah Conservation Corps

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A new and improved CCC is popular.  According to polling from Data for Progress, 79 percent of likely voters support reviving the Corps.

Deslauriers from the Utah Conservation Corps says his group would fit nicely with the Climate Corps mission.

JAKE DESLAURIERS: Where we fit into the Civilian Climate Corps is trying to dovetail into the things that we already do, such as fuels reduction and habitat restoration. We’ve talked to our colleagues around the country, in all the other Corps around the country, as well as the state of Utah to see how we can how we can fit into that.

The Civilian Climate Corps is currently included in the reconciliation bill making its way through Congress. It could get billions in funding.

Justin Higginbottom reported this story

For more on the Utah Conservation Corps visit their website