thank you very much and let me call the subcommittee on national parks for some public lands to order on a hearing on the public lands service corps act of two thousand and nine and today the subcommittee will hear testimony  legislation i introduced two weeks ago along with chairman ray hall to help repair and restore our nation's public lands while employing and training thousands of young americans and promoting a culture of public service in one thousand nine hundred three when the public lands corps which established through the good work of our late colleague of minnesota there was a huge huge backlog of labor intensive work on national park lands for us wildlife refuges historic sites and indian lan but fortunately we still face those challenges and more years of inadequate funding have put these agencies further behind on vital maintenance work while infrastructure continues to crumble despite the bit for some of these underfunded agencies natural and cultural resources been neglected and in many places the effects of climate change are back to find earlier problems with such as fire risk damage by insects and invasive species closely rhodesian and fragmented habitat we have started to attack this problem with the recently passed stimulus legislation but this is only a start and much remains to be done on our public lands the bill h r six hundred twelve will expand and invigorated an existing program the public plan scored by streamlining its management model modernizing its scope and providing new tools to help the program accomplish its mission this legislation not only takes a decisive step forward in finishing desperately needed work on our national parks lands forests wildlife refuges historic sites and indian lands but also recognizes the importance the importance of our of our coastal and marine systems and our national marine sanctuaries these lands and waters have had not previously been eligible for public land corps projects or legislation as authority at the florida to participate in the program by offering corps members its chance to work on restoring coastal and marine ecosystems along our oceans and great lakes in addition the legislation adds incentive and encourages the agencies to pursue an aggressive outreach program to attract new participants specially from under represented populations and prepare them for possible careers in those agencies or in conservation feels this expanded public service initiative will be will introduce people from a greater diversity of social ethnic and cultural backgrounds to our nation's parks and public lands not only a possible future employers employees but as lifelong enthusiastic and protectors little the bill also includes language to ensure adequate housing authorized participants in existing volunteer program to contribute both as mentors and encore projects expand the program for college and graduate students and broaden preferential and higher provisions this legislation takes advantage of an opportunity to provide meaningful employment training to young people who need it while also improving the condition of our prices natural and cultural resources i am present president obama and interior secretary psilocybin have made national service a priority and i look forward to the comments of our administration witnesses today i'm proud to have the support of preeminent conservation groups as well as the leading national parks advocacy groups all of whom are here to testify today i also want to take all so want to thank the gentleman from west virginia our chairman mr ray hall for his support of this legislation other members have also indicated their interest in service learning on public lands and i look forward to working with them and with members of the other body who have had long interest in public lands corpse with this i will hold further comments until mr bishop arrives for his opening comments but let me welcome  gentleman your written statements will be made part of the record please limit and in your oral comments are limited to five minutes welcome it's good to have you here i look forward to your comments on this legislation and sir we would like to begin and thank you for being here nine before i begin i like to introduce the three people from the department of interior who have key roles in news service and conservation programs and they're here to help answer any specific questions you or members of the committee may have about their particular bureaus christopher  education interpretation and partnerships so when we get to the point where action really specific questions i'm going to turn it over to them mr chairman the department strongly supports h r six hundred twelve you already acknowledge secretary salazar is committed to this this commitment goes back twenty years in his professional career try to employ young people in our natural resources from all different aspects of our society this bill would strengthen and facilitate the use of public land corps program helping to fulfill the vision that secretary salazar has for the promote promoting ways to engage young people across america to serve their community and their country while we are strongly supportive of the bill there are a few areas where we'd like to suggest some changes and we'll continue to work with your staff and the committee to provide our recommended changes to you in writing in the very near future de gette nice to see you expanding the use of public land corps could be a particularly important part of our overall strategy for increasing opportunities in incentives for young people to become involved because this program serves other high priority goals as well besides helping us get much needed work done on our public lands it also provides a way to first reconnect young people with their natural environment and cultural heritage second it makes progress progress on energy conservation and the use of alternative sources of energy is another huge priority for secretary salazar and third provide education training and career building experiences including a pathway to careers with federal a management agencies the department regards a public land corps program as an important successful example of civic engagement and conservation the national park service and picked a particular has made widespread use of the program last year the park service had about fifteen hundred p l c members working on one hundred seventy eight projects in ninety nine different park units all three bureaus have been extensively engaged in youth programs that have similar goals we think that the changes that would be made under h r six hundred twelve would strengthen and improve the public land corps in ways that would encourage broader agency use the program we endorse adding the word service to the name of the program to emphasize that aspect of the program most p l c projects at national parks are designed to address maintenance and ecological restoration needs and those types of projects would continue to be done major under h r six hundred twelve however this legislation specifies a broader range of potential projects making it likely that corps corps members could become involved in more varied activities we're used to thinking of corps members building trails but they could be doing all sorts of different kinds of projects such as helping develop materials for junior ranger programs or visitor handouts on safety or working on historical documentation corporatists would also be able to work for a partner organization so long as the work experience is directly related to the pro protection or management of public lands the national park service and the fish and wildlife service have a large number of partners there would be potential sponsors of young people interested in the type of work they might offer the addition of specific authority for agencies to pay transportation expenses for nonresidential corps members is critically important because transportation costs may be a limiting factor in the participation of economically disadvantaged young people as opposed to something that we learned in our work in colorado stickley we found to be very very important the department also benefit from the addition of a consulting in turn as a as a new category of service employment of p l c program these in terms of the graduate students who would would help agencies carry out management analysis development business plans things like that which would also be quite important the provisions for hiring successful core members noncompetitive early at the end of their appointment would provide the agency with an influx of knowledgeable employees as well as career opportunities for those interested in the agency's mission the legislation would also encourage bureaus utilizing this program to expand the scope of core programs to reflect modern day challenges such as climate change it would also add incentives to attract new participants especially from under under identified some areas of concern such a provisions for cost sharing and hiring authority that we want to talk to more about we want to take a closer look at those areas before suggesting potential amendments as i said at the outset we look forward to working with you in the committee on this bill and just on a personal note  i want to again express the secretary's strong interest and commitment to this program when he talks to different groups he identifies the three programs and priorities for him for him in his in time as a terrier secretary in the area of energy and energy preserving treasured landscapes and employing youth so it's one of his top priorities every staff meeting at ten o'clock in the morning we talk about it so it's on his mind personally i've worked on these issues since the early ninety's i oversaw the california conservation corps and my job there in the state of california and since being back in colorado in one thousand nine hundred four have been involved in expanding the secretary's good work in creating the youth the natural resources program in the state of colorado but also helping to grow and expand a number of youth corps programs throughout our follows especially sally praties who has been a key member of the core network and it's been a privilege to work with i also want to note that there's a class from monterey college in north carolina an outdoor recreation but certainly a topic  service has been and what a strong commitment it has to working with america's youth and young adults i think this is been example fide and how we worked with the job corps civilian conservation program for more than forty years will soon be the sole operator of all twenty eight civilian conservation corps centers in the country and it's part of that commitment to the nation's young adults we've also worked extensively with other conservation corps and in fact one of the first projects rolled out under the american recovery and reinvestment act was a california conservation corps project on the san bernardino which was featured last week on primetime nightly news that we have touched close to a million young adults with the programs we've been involved in it's something we've been very proud of we we really feel that as a nation becomes more urban more technology oriented there's even a greater need for the authority that's being would be provided  d in this that we think we can expose tens of thousands of young people each year to the issues of climate change we can help people internalize the core facts that we don't feel in the heart and that is that water comes from the nacho world not from the faucet that the air we breathe can be purified by healthy forest ecosystems and even thriving trees in big urban environments that wildfire can be although dangerous and threatening can also be good for the land and that the relationship between science and active management can work with nature to offer greater opportunities to improve the health of our ecosystems and i think those broad values are reflected in the amendment being considered today this amendment contains a noticeable shift from savile and maintenance work to the emphasis on conservation education green jobs research and science leadership in the natural resource programs work in policy analysis and particular attention  to cultural and heritage assets that are so important to the future of our country and no doubt that this amendment will also help the forest service with its long term employment in addressing issues of attrition it's clearly a potential source for many new employees in fact i might note jack lewis a district civil culturist in colorado who is here with us on a detail got his start in one of these conservation corps and it shows how important these conservation corps can be to our our future workforce and and a workforce that is highly diverse and represents the diverse population of this country and it's just an ideal source for us to tap future employees from so we look forward to  continuing to work in in this environment with both job corps and other conservation corps speaking of job corps the forest service has a strong capability in the residential aspects  discussed in this in this bill job corps centers are twenty four seven environment serving the needs of young adults and we have a very good capability in that area to provide residential experiences  s come from from this authority and we look forward to particularly lending that expertise so we're very supportive from the department of agriculture and from the forest service very supportive of this man that we'd be happy to look  at and work with you on future details particularly focusing on the direct higher authority language service requirements and and better interfaces with the job corps civilian conservation program so mr chairman that concludes my verbal remarks and look forward to answer any questions you may have thank you very much and i have questions but let me first of all turn to a ranking member mr bishop for an opening comments that he might have thank you and we're going to be called to vote in a little while so i hopefully we can get through the questions for the first panel so they will have to wait for us or let me forgo my first question skills technical schools and providing training for some of those entry level positions that these course students or young people might employ in the park my my superintendent and st john has been interested in starting a job corps for example to provide him with some young people who could begin to volunteer in the parks perhaps later to move into jobs and then move up into the system programs through the program we actually do get not only college students but we work through the core network and the hundred thirty one conservation corps throughout the united states we get a quite a wide variety of  students and kids out of the inner city that participate in these programs if there are other approaches that we can use to recruit participants we will certainly look into it and the vast majority would not have college degrees and that could be very exceptional if that were the case so it's very much oriented towards creating new directions in their life as well as new and emerging skills that will be so important for future careers the supervision takes place i've heard some very positive reviews but i've also heard some concerns that the kids who are in this need some kind of supervision sometimes close supervision and that regular employees are taken from their duties to do that how would this legislation address that sort of issue student conservation association or one of the other core networks and the supervision and is generally done by those organizations that we're that our agencies are partnering with and so there is a relatively small amount of actual supervision occurs by  through the through the various service providers that we work with and we've been very satisfied with that gotten good results with tax liability which is with you on a later date if that's ok how the cost of this program cost this program change under the legislation only the ranking member i'm not the chairman i know these guys get their budget all right let me ask one last question in february i sent the department a request for certain national park service documents to date i have yet to receive a response from that request you that's all thank you mr chairman i know it seems like colorado is taking over the interior department and that is our call just but but actually we servant and i urge everyone on the subcommittee to get to know him and work with him over the years and i want to welcome you to your to your new position we're thrilled to have you i just have one question for the whole panel i've been reading some some studies lately that indicate that a disturbing trend in the last few years where even though our population is increasing and certainly in the western united states our population is increasing nevertheless usage of our public lands decreasing in particular by young people and and there are some worries about this as we go into the years ahead i spent a lot of time talking to george miller about this and fact i'm wondering if you think any of our witnesses would think that legislation like this bill might bring young people back into our public lands not really but invest them into into into these areas and start a whole new generation of commitment for any of you to get first of all i want to thank you for your welcome and thank you for your great service to our may have read last child in the woods it talks about sort of the phenomena like you i have high school age children and although i make it a point of getting them out in nature a lot of their friends don't and i think we have a generation of young people who are not as connected to the outdoors as many in our generation were german and i talked earlier about his interest in in this subject matter and his own connection to the land but my boss ken salazar has the same kind of connection having grown up in s valley on a ranch but i think it's our duty in many ways to do all the different things that we can do to reconnect this next generation of americans back to the land and i think expanding opportunities like the public land score is one way to do it and i think we would like to do it in the in a in a pretty big way to try to recreate that connection but also obviously to do the many things that need to be done in our public lands at the same time and training young people in these careers and about natural resources and i might add a man that although the forest service is in the department of agriculture as secretary vilsack son lives in colorado so we're certainly in colorado to the side it is is exactly right and it's what makes our kids in the village program and our and our attention to this program so essential because the natural world is so critical in meeting the basic needs that are really being challenged and that young people frankly have such little exposure to and i know so many employees in the u s forest service got their interest in working for the forest service by some contact or some encounter with somebody  the woods either through a conservation corps ranger or that kind of thing and it was just so important and so it's it's a major emphasis area for the forest service and key to i think some of our our future as a as a nation thank you build upon it is certainly something i support i noticed that the secretary of commerce in nola will be included now under this expansion authority how are you going to be working with in particular no i since i'm  so i think that it will be our duty to make sure that we work closely together with them to try to bring them in to this program so we're working jointly together on accomplishing our mutual ends so this is occurring now you are working with them in many many ways on an endangered species implementation in particular we work closely with them but i also think that today there hasn't been a strong partnership on you think agent but i think we need to step up and do that and i would echo that we have obviously a very close working relationship with the department of interior but we you in particular for this proposal because reinvigorating any program that's getting our young people out into nature is one on one thousand percent behind as you know and you've been very helpful with this we've been we've been pushing hard with this no child left inside legislation and there's a coalition now about twelve hundred organizations across the country supporting that including many who are promoting getting our kids into into our parks and into that kind of recreational space so i really just want to thank you for joining us effort and supporting in and working hard to successful it's as though at a time when there's so much coming at our young people from the virtual world terms of the internet and video games and television everything we're trying to bring them squinting out into the light of day and enjoying nature and once they get out there they're going to be coming gaijin excited in jazz and they're actually going to lead the rest of us out into into our natural spaces which is what's so your comments there with some additional questions but rather than keep you here after the break when we go to vote they had to do with the with a question about their expanding the program to include mutual accommodation so this legislation can go forward and please thank the secretary for his encouragement and thank you very much and we're going to be recessed until after a vote thank you thank you organization that since one nine hundred fifty seven has engaged more than fifty thousand diverse college and high school students in a hands on conservation service on america's public lands and i applaud the committee for recognizing both potential and the need for an expanded public land service corps and for hearing testimony on what s b a believes is a particularly timely and effective legislative initiative this act will benefit the nation in three profound ways by preserving our natural cultural and historical heritage by providing jobs and job training for thousands of deserving young people and by helping a new generation develop the skills and commitment to become tomorrow's conservation and environmental leaders i should note that it was originally modeled after the old civilian conservation corps it was founded by a young woman in college in the one nine hundred fifty s who saw young volunteers as a solution to helping the overburdened national conservation service corps annually engaging thousands of young adults and teens in parks sanctuaries and urban communities in all fifty states this year alone s c a members will render more than two million two million hours of service to their nation and their communities mr chairman the impact of these young people have in the land is profound and immediate but their influence influence extends well beyond the here and now the evidence that conservation service doesn't produce ardent stewards and citizens is convincing a few facts stas alumni surveys reveal that some sixty percent of our members move into conservation related professions and volunteer in conservation endeavors in their home communities a landmark study of s c a and other outdoor programs by dr stephen keller showed that seventy eight percent of participants declared themselves more environmentally aware responsible and active as a result of their experience and review of the workforce at the departments of interior agriculture and others throughout the public and private sectors reveals that thousands of s c alumni employ are employed as rangers scientist environmental educators and more in fact the national park service alone has estimated that as many as twelve percent of its uniform employees launch their careers through internships no one in this room needs to be reminded that our economy and our environment are in crisis and today's generation knows unless we are able to address these issues and soon they will inherit a host of problems that grow more acute by the day but i want to assure you that there is also ample reason for hope growing numbers of young people across the nation are eager prepared to respond to a renewed call to service applications to s c a are now at all time the highs more than forty percent ahead of this point last year and many other conservation corps and service organizations are experiencing similar growth and surges and expanded public lands service corps along with president obama's give act and the bipartisan candidates serve america act when fully funded have the potential to chart a new era of citizen service at a time when our country and our people need it the most i know this bill is focused on federal public land lands however to ensure nature's wonders an opportunity is available to all populations and to bring a more inclusive conservation community s c a has for many decades focus on engaging under served urban populations in cooperation with city authorities we introduce african american latino asian american and other people young people to their hometown parks encourage them to explore their own unique connections with nature we furnish them stipends to make our programs more accessible provide innovative routes to their education and to provide them tangible job skills that lead promising productive careers i encourage this committee to join other conservation corps and other youth service programs and building bridges between local communities and federal lands as a proven partner of the bureau's within and interior agriculture and commerce and other federal departments  ready to help fulfill the objectives of this legislation by engaging more young people in conservation service reaching out to diverse populations and providing tens of thousands of emerging citizens with a direct pipeline to green jobs and lifelong stewardship i have a number of specific comments to highlight on key components of this legislation which i will submit in my written testimony and i wished now to share my time with marcus hendricks who is a  recent member and is a fine example of the thousands of young men and women who will benefit from this bill we're very proud of what marcus has done and what he's going to do with his life like for you to make marcus right now wel mechanical engineering at the george washington university i grew up in the d c area and i went to high school at the school without walls i started working with the s b a as a sophomore in high school in order to service hours that i needed for graduation moments of my life took place on those not only because of the people that i was working with but also because of the natural environment that i was working in that allowed me to take my mind off of stress stressful things such as homework and school in school students have the opportunity to enhance their classroom learning with outdoor experiences so that they can develop a personal attachment to what is learned in the textbook or an educational videos when i propose going to a local national parks  my senior class or a field trip they said it would be boring they didn't want to get dirty and they were afraid of they were afraid of bugs i believe a valuable opportunity to experience a sense of connection support any program that would expand opportunities for young people to have meaningful experiences and connections with the parks and public lands that i have with us thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today and i would be happy to answer any questions you might ha thank you to privilege to be here and we appreciate your chairman and the members of the committee for the tremendous work we're delighted with the bill this before us today my name is sally proudly and i'm president and c e o of the car network and it is my privilege to speak strongly in support of this public land service corps act i'm here on behalf of the core network and the one hundred thirty six service and conservation corps it represents and the twenty six thousand young people enrolled in those corps and i wanted to note that over half of the young people enrolled in the course that we represent enter the court without a high school diploma or ged so there's a very wide range of young people that we represent i have submitted comments but in the brief time i have this afternoon i'd like to emphasize why this bill is so important and certainly important to the to the world of course that we represent and first of all it will bring much needed resources to the tremendous backlog projects that you all know about it will increase utilization of service and service learning as strategies for accomplishing work on public lands it  introduce more and more diverse young people to america's public lands instilling in them an appreciation for nature and enjoyment of healthy recreation and a sense of stewardship for our natural resources in the environment in addition by expanding the noncompetitive hiring status of public lands corps members that will bring youth and diversity to the land management agency workforce and provide additional opportunities for young people particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue good careers in land and natural resource management it will raise the profile of the public land service corps within the relevant agencies and establish coordinators making it easier for c and other youth service organizations to participate and it will help bring corps that come a proven youth development street strategy to scale today's corps our proven strategy for giving young men and women many of whom are economically or otherwise disadvantaged and out of work out of school the chance to have a positive impact on their own lives and the communities and the environment and i would note that we know from random assignment evaluation that young people enrolled in corps have substantial earnings and employment gains the risk behaviors decreased and we know that findings are most significant for young african american american men very interesting that i'm sitting here with you today of the twenty six thousand core members currently enrolled fifty five percent have no high school diploma sixty four percent report family income below the federal poverty level thirty percent have had previous court involvement in at least ten percent have been in foster care contemporary corps provide thousands of sixteen to twenty five year olds the opportunity to earn a second chance in life through hard work and service to their communities the most important part of my being here as is that i am seated with james childress and of at times not want to get up in the morning my home life was stressful my parents were going through a divorce my two young resonates on my look too and i was not there i just i had just graduated from high school in beckley and i need to figure out what we're going to do next a friend of mine from a local church know my situation i want to help me avoid a total disaster so just ask apply for a position with the court i thought about the military but i was not rated take that step yet and i felt i was needed at home i joined the corps in june of two thousand and seven and little did i know what time an impact it would have on my way of thinking about my future i began with the c c c w v working in the new river gorge national park we're going to go for it sometimes five another direction of a crew leader we in their habitat i also learned about pesticides and how to apply them safely while i was in high school it became clear that i did not do my best in a traditional classroom setting but i was a sight learner and i learn best by having people show me because everything i do at the c c c w other tools these certifications and all of this is france will make match after future to future employers i have also developed a number of skills that will help me in the workforce such as teamwork problem solving ability and pride in work in the ship perhaps the most importantly i've learned a lot more about myself as what i like and what i want to do and what i can achieve if i focus and push myself to do it i'm still currently working for the c c c w v and through more corps service i have successfully earned america or education or to help me pay for higher education and in the future i hope to use that award to study for mechanical engineering benefit is so much for my experience and working on the public plan corps projects because i was challenged and exposed to all the kinds of things and because of this experience i have now a greater respect for the natural beauty in or public lands which will make me a better steward of those lands i hope that this bill passes so more young people like me have the same opportunity thank you thank you very much and it seems that based on the experience that chairman i am a mechanical engineer and i'm delighted to marcus and james of pick that as a profession it's a it's a great degree i am here representing three hundred forty thousand members of the national parks conservation association but in my day job as c e o of r e i we sell a lot of outdoor equipment to people who love and enjoy a healthy environment for renewal and recreation so this is true asli important to us i will also say that at r e i we work with a lot of nonprofit organizations like the student conservation association and many members of the core network in states across this country to do service on public lands last year about one and a half million hours of service on public lands so these organizations the young people represented up here are represented by organizations like them across this country and the amount of work that they do is nothing short of amazing you can go back to our wonderful national park network from mt rainier national park in my neck of the woods to grand canyon to shenandoah and see the work that was done by young people in the thirty's you can see it in places like moran state park near me in the san juan islands or even sherman rock which is a climbing rock built  by the civilian conservation corps in local city park very close to my house in seattle these kinds of projects connect people for life to the places james and i were talking a minute ago and i saw marcus a week and a half ago as we were working on on the future of the national parks and they both talk about that bridge they built being their bridge and the connection that you get to that place that you work on dan evans probably the most famous politician ever sorry jay you're not there yet but you will  be from the state of washington three term governor and replaced a scoop jackson a senator told me not too long ago that when he drove along i ninety in what we call the mount to sound green way he always looked for his tree and i said your tree and he said yes i planted  tree as a boy scout when i was ten years old and that tree is now seventy three years old so stories like that give people a connection to place and i so appreciate chairman  making public lands a part of the service corps acts that are currently going through or have just passed congress my son peter worked for three years as a volunteer climbing ranger alongside might go t a former climbing ranger actually sitting in the corner of the room over there mike's on the bed of an arrow fellowship for two years here his work in mt rainier national park in gauging young volunteers changes lives and the budget and the support for those kinds of programs do make an enormous difference so we're in an interesting time right now with the tough economy with increasing levels of unemployment and underemployment about young people and older americans we have a  diversity on our public lands our public lands are not represented by the people who represent this country and we have parks public lands and open spaces that are desperately in need of help and so this bill i think represents a trifecta of opportunity to solve this engages the incredible diversity of this nation by making a connection to public lands it provides opportunities for employment when we really need them not only for young people but also for older americans who have a tremendous amount of skill and labor and love of this land to give back and it brings our national parks and our public lands back with some chronically needed tender loving care they are in fact falling apart and as you prepare for the centennial of our national parks in two thousand and sixteen there's nothing i think that could be more impactful than putting young people alongside older people to work on these important places to really start the second century of the national park service in the time when our public lands are so important on the radar for all americans so i appreciate very much the tremendous effort you've made in putting this bill forward and give it my whole hearted support and look coalition of national park service retirees to testify my name is john rattles i'm a landscape architect i have a member of the coalition having served nearly forty years at the national park service including in positions as park superintendent regional director and deputy director retirement i have served on the boards of directors of the student conservation association and you somebody national institutes young people in parks and other public lands currently in retained by the student conservation association as an adviser last i have also through the national parks conservation association contract advisor to the connecting people in parks committee of the national parks second century commission sally as my boss chairman i will summarize my testimony and have submitted the full testimony for the record today you have brought before us an opportunity to go bind some of the very best of american ideals into one very important a that will benefit the nation's treasured lands and which will inspire and empower people who have inherited these lands as either their birthright or as a result of choosing citizenship in this nation the national park service from its very beginning hundred sixteen has benefited greatly from service by individuals to their nation the service is also seen from that time beginning is important in the education of the american people this act will serve to make their traditions of the services past even more relevant to the needs of today and the future some have called the national parks the best idea america ever had because of our nation's democratic impulse to save these parks for all of us regardless of who we are or where we are from today the need to provide opportunity to connect americans in the places they live to the richness of our national parks public lands cultural heritage is ever more eviden this act will be a permanent beneficial bridge between americans and their nation this bill is thoughtfully crafted in my written testimony i list many provisions that the coalition wants especially to support but which i will not now  numerate the coalition wishes by that testimony to help ensure that these provisions are retained when this bill is and acted in the law the coalition requests of the committee entertain the following possible additional amendments one agency needs for multilingual front line assistance and qualified assistance in classrooms or outdoor learning programs be specifically included specific authorization for operation of residential centers by qualified experienced nonprofit organizations three edition of agency retirees to the mentoring program for provision made for certain older americans to serve as well as you and fifth experience over the last several years and obtaining approval of a cooperative agreements in many agencies has been very discouraging to not nonprofit partners with long some over fifty years and productive relationships with agencies time and effort spent with lawyers and contracting officers has met large outlays of money and time by nonprofit personnel agencies have had to waste precious funds and time detracting from their core missions this debilitating and detrimental condition still exists it has the potential to create difficulties and implementation of this act section two zero six could be greatly strengthened and efficient implementation materially improved by adding the following language the secretary is authorized to enter into cooperative agreements noncompetitive li with the student conservation association conservation corps or any other qualified nonprofit organization to perform any authorized general purpose of the department  and is the agreement will one serve a mutual interest of the parties to the to the agreement in carrying out the programs administered by the department and to all parties contribute resources to the complement of these programs both fairness and efficiency and need be achieved the coalition is deeply appreciative of the work of the committee and its staff in preparing this bill the benefits which will accrue to members of the cor national parks other public lands and to the nation itself so difficult to quantify are truly important to our entire society this bill positively affect the future of our youth and may well contribute to the future of their families in so doing it will be the nation our society and our environment which will benefit from the investments made in the men and women who will have the opportunity of their lifetime in summary lives will be more joyful and productive character will be honed america will benefit the testimony of marcus and james is the most crucial of all it is for their future and the future of their and future generations that this bill is for the coalition of national park service retirees is honored to have been asked to testify today stands ready to assist and looks forward to the enactment of this bill the coalition strongly and enthusiastically supports it thank you very much thank you and thank all of you for your comments and let me let me begin with you if i may mr reynolds among the amendments that the coalition suggested as it went to make it possible for older americans as well as youth continue to have that target age of sixteen to twenty five is still part of the legislation mr chairman i would suggest that we keep the target age but in but in addition and opportunities for older americans who have never had the opportunity to go to go on to school to be able to qualify under certain circumstances and we'd be more than willing to help work on trying to define what that means thank you and we will look forward to that that discussion the intent of that target age but i think your point is well taken about the mentoring and the possibility of some generational understanding wanted to make sure that i stand in his welcome to you directly as his hometown also and he wanted you and he asked me to extend his best wishes and the new river gorge national park is also very near d do you think we're siblings and i'm going to ask the same question to all of you watching you going through this program in the periods that you've gone through with the corps what effect has it had to live on the effect it has on them is back then they looked at me as some i look up to during a hard time and now that i've been there where they're looking at me now my hey i can actually look out damn and do something with my life instead of being here like many other children but i think through this court is going to help and that there is more out there than just sit inside playing video games all day which i mean is not bad but sometimes he has sometimes we have to go outside and do stuff and learn to work and learn responsibility and put with him where he saw thing and by me doing this is showing them that there's something outside of just in the house all day do you see yourself  after you complete your college education do you see yourself pursuing a career and national park service public land area after i finish i want to send the military but outside of that  i want to still help outside national park and everything and i hope are suing the public lands corps of best able to me to be able to help them thank you very much  i understand that many corps members do not work full time because they you know they can't afford to or or prefer not to go too far from home but this is one of the critical populations that we hope to capture with this legislation that's as as you know do you have any concerns that the preferential hiring language requiring one hundred sixty hours of service might be a disincentive to  to some members who would want to participate and if so do you have a need it's about a deal with that concern thank you mr chairman that is a concern for us and we do have i would say that all of our are full time but they're for varying lengths of time so some are short number of weeks or months so that's getting to the one hundred sixty hours is not possible for them and i would would really appreciate the opportunity for us to work with you to think about whether there is a tiered opportunity within the noncompetitive hire which for lesser number of hours many of our young people would be qualified for entry level jobs that would not be ready for more advanced positions with federal agencies so we would appreciate the chance to work with you on that just a quick follow up in your testimony you list the very impressive list of achievements of the service corps just for just for the sake of my understanding do you see what do you think of the program as a land management program is it a human resource development program is it an intervention program for at risk kids and i mention that because it's rare to have something as successful having all those ingredients  if you were to classify it with a definition on it which would be well it would be all of the above and it's interesting we have wonderful corps that have college students college graduates f c a and a number of others and we also have corps that are fully concentrated on young people who are not making it in their community we have course of concentrate on young people have been formerly incarcerated in court involved so we have two areas in which we feel strongly about evaluation and one is in member development and its member development based on the point of entry the other is impacting the community and the environment we see cars as unique to the communities in which they live and breathe they've grown up in communities they are different and they set their own standards for enrollment we see benefit across the board and most dramatic benefit in terms of education and workforce development is for those who come in at a much lower level thank you  that example what role do you envision then for the federal government in this more collaborative effort to suggest well thank you for the question and yes i do that what we found is that one of the great things about young people in urban centers is that they want to they are more drawn to conserve their own land than they are to go into federal lands and and i think if if the all of the bureaus all of the agencies are going to help diversify their workforce and represent and be friendly to diverse conservation corps and seeking a matching funds and having the if the federal government could help provide training programs for young people once they've gone through a certain level of program in their local community  if the park service for instance would then provide those students with a secondary experience on the federal lands that help to help them qualify for preferential hiring then i think we could more  to be part of the corps project how do you envision this process are the is that a training capacity mentoring capacity or participant capacity well it could be all of the above but i was thinking of it in terms of the participant capacity and i'll give you some great examples r e i is oldest employee is ninety two our youngest employee is sixteen our ninety two year old employee works on the sales lower floor in reno nevada and there isn't a service project that store does out in the community that mountain babar ninety two year old isn't a part of i think what we found in this is true when we work outdoors with for example earth's core or the washington trails association you frequently have experienced americans working alongside young people and the richness of exchange is amazing so i would say it's at a participant capacity but you also have skills that have been learned over a lifetime that can be applied and so it could also be in training and we see that both and the follow up on another question we would like to get into writing for the committee having to do with the issue of flexibility in the schedule because i to thank all the witnesses here i was very interested in listening to your statements and i especially enjoyed hearing the testimonies of marcus and james you know when you think about it programs like these can make such a difference in your life i speak to students about careers on many occasions and i always say what you have in mind may not be in your earlier years what you really are going to end up doing it may even have something to do with someone you married i married a politician so that's why i'm here today but i truly appreciate you know all of the volunteers and what they're doing in this program and mr chairman i i applaud you for sponsoring this bill i want to ask the young man first what do we need to have in this program to make it as attractive as possible to the young people how do we go about doing outreach advertising i mean are we doing enough so i'll begin with you marcus thank you i think you can also in terms of advertising reach out a lot of high school students because high school students are looking forward to going to college and they also have to what are they going to do with the next forty the same thing i have a brother that's about to graduate high school and so by me being in this he's one to do the same thing to wait to be independent so i'm so and make sure he is on the right path like i am so by advertising this out to younger students especially from their sophomore year if we get to them now there's a better chance that bill changed probably changed their whole career logan the rest of my life thank you thank you and i have a question for m penny h r sixteen twelve but i'm in the public land corps act to allow the united states fish and wildlife service to participate as an eligible under the public lands court act now i believe this is a very excellent may be aware to other separate laws facilitate the contributions of volunteers at our national wildlife refuges and at our national fish hatchery and through these two laws one is the national wildlife refuge system volunteer and community partnership act and the other is the national fish hatchery systems volunteer act now the fish and wildlife service has established nearly one ninety friend organizations through these programs the service also has received thousands of hours of invaluable volunteer labor and in kind services which have helped alleviate cutbacks in federal staff levels at our refuges hatcheries my questions are has your organization ever provided any volunteers to support operations at our national wildlife refuges or the national fish hatchery and if not is there some impediment preventing it and the second part of the question is do you that the passage of  wildlife service on numerous occasions for many years has been a has had a cooperative agreement with fish and wildlife service for about the last thirty years so the only thing that keeps us from doing doing the more opportunities and more young people will be involved will be interested in being involved so i think that's an excellent inclusion very good and i agree one last question mister chairman ma'am may i just respond to the question you asked because in james i would say one way to the best way to recruit more young people into working on public lands is to get young people out talking to them and i would say the best way to do that is to work with cooperating organizations like the various corps and get their members visiting schools and ex sharing their experience it's not those of us with great h that recruit them are even a green and gray uniform the park service is somebody that shares their experience and with that wholeheartedly one last question is do your and this could be  mr penny your organizations have any programs on guam or in any of the other insular areas and if not what can we do to get asean corps volunteers in the guam national wildlife refuge islands and we just like we'd like to do more good well i would certainly like to invite you to do more and we would like to work with you to do more and we have not put it i've been assured by the chairman that the territories are included in this thank you thank you thank you for those suggestions i think the issue of outreach and how it's done and the importance of that is important in the areas and territories to be included in help with developing our clean energy corps which is a somewhat allied effort and we really appreciate we think we have a good product and we have a suite of these of these opportunities for young people now so whatever their vision is they can take advantage a welcome her as a leader in our community in washington state and she's been a very successful business leader in a variety of contexts and i just wonder sally if you can give us any thoughts about if you are looking at this from a business perspective do you have any suggestions on how to operate these particular endeavors give any suggestions any criticisms you certainly know how to run an operation so lands many of the members of the core network are organizations that we work closely with and i would say that while they are very committed to their work they're always short of money it's not uncommon for them to run into bureaucracy when they work on public lands and i think one of the things that could be facilitated to help move these things forward is a clear commitment on the part of the  agencies from all the ones that are mentioned certainly national parks but u s forest service fish and wildlife service know and so on to really help create a supportive infrastructure to bring in organizations that are very very effective in engaging in engaging young people and older people in service as well as volunteers so i think that you end up with the national park superintendents and national forest supervisors who are really supportive in some cases and in other cases it's more difficult to bring the volunteer resources to bear i think sometimes because of the challenges they face in within their own agency so we might think this may be a little controversy or what we might want to think about specific appropriations or allocations for volunteer infrastructure you know to get volunteers in you have to have the personnel to organize supervise recruit maybe that's something we can think about more in the appropriation side of this let me ask my son works for a group called outdoors for all they take people with challenges skiing quadriplegics and blind people skiing and kayaking is pretty amazing group with this pill allow folks to essentially be detailed organizations like that or at least work arm in arm with them how flexible with this allow these cord to be it's an open question anyone i see develop any shaking his head to any thoughts about that sure i think  we would like to be able to include groups like that for appropriate level of work to be done and i think you have to be very clear about where where they could work and what is appropriate from a risk management point of view but i think it should be open to all of those groups yeah i was thinking actually more the question of the relationship between these volunteers are these core members with  nonprofits other words can you actually sort of lend out a person on this score to a nonprofit organization like this for a week or a month or under their supervision is that workable is does the statute as we drafted it here allow sufficient flexibility in is in fact as i understand it for projects and if if the cooperative agreement with the corps is to complete a particular project or a series of projects then then the core would have to be focused on this project so it sounds to me like the line of reasoning that you're engaged in might not fit or it might need we might need to think about that we both dale and i have corps around the country who have individual placements of members doing particular work but it's different from what we would would normally see in a public lands corps project funded  that that passed recently accommodate some of what you're discussing and what this is specifically looking at is really around public lands which weren't explicitly called out in the earlier legislation so i do think that there is a benefit of focus that has has put into this legislation around public lands because the need is so great i think if if you go back to the testimony of will share for us a little bit earlier he talked about you know the opportunity not just say in a national park but all the way down to city parks and public lands it's a great way to engage people in public service close to where they live and in my conversation with james a we were waiting for the session to start you know a lot of his work he stays at home and he goes to the site during the day and then he comes back and i think that that's really addresses these kinds of opportunities in sir learning close to home as well as more and remote destinations like s i think that the other  contracting officers that the park service is faced with because it doesn't have a similar legislation the park service agreement which should be done in about a month has been going on for two years eleven months and it's still counting to get this agreement and  the reason that i made the recommendation in my testimony about legislation was to eliminate that kind of bottleneck for all of the agencies and it's not because the agencies don't want to make things happen it's because the advisers to the agencies contracting and turning have different interpretations of law and and if we want this act and other cooperative acts to get youth in the parks and the other public lands to work efficiently these authorities need to be addressed well i know many would seek to outlaw hendrickson mr childers for being here you guys are exactly what we had in mind it's just wonderful to see your future developing i want to give you a warning though i know a couple guys who are involved in s c a and doing this kind of work one of them in it up of a very wealthy investment banker and went up a congressman so you've got to be careful when you get into these things given your given your warnings about that good luck thank you thank you mr chairman i commend you and mr ray hall for pursuing this legislation i'm pleased to have worked to get national parks included in the recent volunteer service legislation exists in today's young people i'd like to look from the other side what the potential is sally jewell i know heard the secretary of the interior say just last night that he would like to greatly increase the volunteer opportunities in the parks i want to get some idea of what's the upper limit what what could this system  absorb and how how large scale might we go to perhaps you've covered this already in today's hearing but i think it's an important enough question that wouldn't hurt covering it again let me take a chairman we've been called to a vote you know we've got about five six minutes so as we wrap up i'm just urging you to be yeah i mean if you can just give us your estimate in a sentence or two why well i would say that the potential is hundreds of thousands and i'll say why and that is because right now many many programs are being cut and there is the infrastructure and the people in the organizations ready to step forward but they are they don't have funding right now to be able to do it so i think it could be in large dramatically and i would say that we have recently been in communication with working with department of interior and we've given them basic information around a two hundred thousand number so those discussions would be continuing obviously and they're not hard and fast but that's the number with thinking i would agree with both the capacity of all of the organizations collectively together is huge  if the money is there to support the build up of the capacity and the young people are there and i think that's important too thank you i wish we could continue the discussion again i commend the chair for pursuing this legislation thank you very much for so let me thank all of you panelists for being here informative some very good suggestions that we will work with you on to follow up in terms of the legislation it's a vehicle a vehicle to promote three things that i asked a question about intervention in one area of human resource development and another in our public lands and that's the intent of the legislation to try to accomplish those three years some of the fine organizations that are been doing for a long time we look forward to moving this legislation ahead and with the input of my colleagues as well as with the i think we'll have a good vehicle for accomplishing those three goals thank you very much very much very informative and and a good hearing thank you thank