Department Spotlight: California promotes national forest preservation among youth
Editor’s note: This is a weekly series of Department Spotlight stories featuring unique programs and initiatives of departments throughout The American Legion. Department adjutants are invited to recommend subjects for their departments by emailing magazine@legion.org.
The unique relationship between The American Legion Department of California and the U.S. Forest Service for the past 40 years has helped environmentally conscientious youth learn how to care for America’s national forests.
The department’s Youth Environmental Leadership Conference (YELC) is a three-day event in May at Sly Park Environmental Education Center in Eldorado National Forest that’s open to high school sophomores and juniors across the state. About 60 students attend the program every year to learn through classwork and outdoor activities about the forest environment, the animals and plants that reside in the forest, management techniques, the needs and values of people as it relates to the forest, and how to enjoy and appreciate nature.
YELC helps youth “appreciate what the forest is doing for them, in addition to what they can do for the forest,” said YELC Coordinator Barbara Ross, who has been involved with the program for 27 years and is a member of Auxiliary Unit 130 in Grass Valley, Calif.
The conference is facilitated by volunteers from the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry, while six Legion family members are chaperones.
A few of the forest-related educational activities that attendees partake in involve learning how to take a plug out of a tree to determine its age and health, or how to identify a tree that can be removed when clearcutting. They also learn about forest fires, how to control them and the regeneration process.
“The Youth Environmental Leadership Conference gives the students an opportunity to learn about forest management, and how forests can serve as habitat for wildlife, as well as provide recreation and lumber, while still being preserved for future generations,” said Gary Leach, Department of California commander.
Other YELC activities involve hiking, rock-wall climbing, participating in a talent show and making s’mores. And the Legion family members share about the organization and the other youth programs and scholarships available to them.
“I love the opportunities that we give these kids,” Ross said. “I have seen kids skip lunch to run over snow, or toast a marshmallow for the first time.”
Legion posts that sponsor youth to attend YELC promote the program to schools in conjunction with promotional efforts for Boys State, Girls State and the Oratorical Contest. Ross said they try to gear the program to youth who plan to pursue environmental studies in college, as well as to youth who may not have the fortune to ever attend an event like YELC.
“We have received letters from students who say how they have never been allowed to go on a school-sponsored trip because they couldn’t raise the money,” Ross said. “So here we give them this opportunity where there is no money involved at all.”
Leach said one of his favorite memories of YELC was when a student his post sponsored to attend the program “was so motivated by what he experienced at the conference that he received a scholarship in environmental studies, a career path he had not contemplated before attending the conference.”
Upon graduation from YELC, the youth receive a program T-shirt and pin, as well as an opportunity to apply for a $2,000 scholarship.
“The program gives kids a whole new perspective on life," Ross said. "We are not out there hugging trees; that’s not the purpose at all. We are teaching them to respect the forest, to respect the different values we all have, and I love the opportunities we are giving these kids."