Group that clears trails, do other service, face budget ax
An MCC crew member clears the Loneman Lookout Trail in this file photo.
A program that funds trail crews in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park faces the budget ax under President Trump’s proposed budget.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester last week announced $1.8 million in grants to the Montana Conservation Corps for this year. But Trump’s 2018 budget would zero out the Corporation for National and Community Service, the umbrella organization that MCC is a part of.
The Corporation for National Community Service is a federal agency that engages millions of Americans in service through its core programs — Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and the Social Innovation Fund — and the national volunteer efforts through Serve.gov. MCC is part of Americorps and every year, MCC crews clear a lot of trail in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier Park.
Crews are generally young college-aged students. They get a stipend of $550 to $600 every two weeks and if they complete the program, they get a $5,300 award that is used to pay down college tuition costs, MCC state director Jono McKinney said last week.
This year, MCC has 78 AmeriCorps members serving in the Kalispell region, McKinney said. This summer there will be three seven-person crews working 12 weeks apiece in the Spotted Bear District and another crew working fuels reduction for six weeks. In addition, crews will be spending 25 weeks on projects in Glacier and a Blackfeet crew will be working on the reservation and in the Badger-Two Medicine, Kalispell Director Cliff Kipp said.
They also will be working on projects closer to home — they just finished building a crib wall on the Columbia Mountain Trail.
Statewide they worked about 400,000 hours last year and cleared nearly 1,000 miles of trail. This is the 26th year of the program.
Tester said he would “fight tooth and nail” against cuts to the program, noting the program does a great service to the community and the country as a whole.
MCC is also a stepping stone into a career for many workers in the field of conservation and forestry, Kipp noted. Agencies and nonprofits are more likely to hire MCC program grads because they have a history of working with the crews.
McKinney told the story of an Afghanistan veteran who joined the program because she still wanted “to be part of a mission.”