108TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. R. 4838
AN ACT
To establish a Healthy Forest Youth Conservation
Corps to provide a means by which young adults
can carry out rehabilitation and enhancement
projects to prevent fire and suppress fires, reha-
bilitate public land affected or altered by fires,
and provide disaster relief, and for other pur-
poses.
108TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. R. 4838
AN ACT
To establish a Healthy Forest Youth Conservation Corps
to provide a means by which young adults can carry
out rehabilitation and enhancement projects to prevent
fire and suppress fires, rehabilitate public land affected
or altered by fires, and provide disaster relief, and for
other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Healthy Forest Youth
Conservation Corps Act of 2004’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that—
(1) the natural fire regimes of forested public
land have been altered by intensive fire suppression;
(2) fire suppression has led to increased risk of
unnaturally severe wildfires that in recent years have
destroyed thousands of homes, devastated agricul-
tural crops and livestock, reduced biodiversity, and
scorched thousands of areas of soil and natural re-
sources;
(3) catastrophic wildfires pose a particular
threat to communities and wildlife living close to for-
ested wildland, known as the ‘‘wildland-urban inter-
face’’;
(4) each year millions of dollars are spent to
fight severe wildfires and protect communities where
municipal water supplies, human lives, and property
are threatened;
(5) contracts and cooperative agreements be-
tween Federal agencies and State and local govern-
ments and other entities empower communities and
are cost-effective tools that provide positive social
and environmental benefits, and the use of such con-
tracts and agreements should be encouraged as a
means to prevent unnaturally severe fires, rehabili-
tate public land affected or altered by fires, and en-
hance and maintain environmentally important land
and water; and
(6) joint collaborations between the Federal
agencies and service and conservation corps com-
posed of young adults are particularly beneficial, as
the collaborations provide—
(A) young adults the opportunity to pre-
pare for productive lives while engaged in
meaningful and educational public service op-
portunities; and
(B) the public with cost-saving human re-
sources to assist in conserving, maintaining,
and protecting public land.
SEC. 3. PURPOSES.
The purposes of this Act are—
(1) to allow service and conservation corps to
enter into agreements with public land management
agencies to perform rehabilitation and enhancement
projects to prevent fire, rehabilitate public land af-
fected or altered by fires, and suppress fires, and
provide disaster relief;
(2) to offer young adults who are members of
a service and conservation corps, particularly young
adults who are at-risk or economically disadvan-
taged, a chance to obtain skills and experience in
forest restoration, so that they are better equipped
to gain productive employment in the expanding
workforce being deployed on National Forest System
lands in fuels reduction, post-fire rehabilitation, and
other forest health projects, and so that the pool of
trained workers in forest restoration is expanded to
satisfy the existing and increasing need for such
workers;
(3) to provide those young adults the oppor-
tunity to serve their communities and their country;
and
(4) to expand educational opportunities by re-
warding individuals who participate in the Healthy
Forest Youth Conservation Corps with an increased
ability to pursue higher education or employment.
SEC. 4. HEALTHY FOREST YOUTH CONSERVATION CORPS.
(a) 
ESTABLISHMENT.—There 
is 
established 
a
Healthy Forest Youth Conservation Corps.
(b) PARTICIPANTS.—The Corps shall consist of
young adults who are enrolled as members of a service
and conservation corps covered by a contract or coopera-
tive agreement entered into under subsection (c).
(c) CONTRACTS OR AGREEMENTS.—The Secretary
concerned may enter into contracts or cooperative agree-
ments directly with—
(1) any service and conservation corps to carry
out a rehabilitation and enhancement project de-
scribed in subsection (d); or
(2) a department of natural resources, agri-
culture, or forestry (or an equivalent department) of
any State that has entered into a contract or cooper-
ative agreement with a service and conservation
corps to carry out a rehabilitation and enhancement
project described in subsection (d).
(d) AUTHORIZED PROJECTS.—Under a contract or
cooperative agreement entered into under subsection (c),
a service and conservation corps may carry out a rehabili-
tation and enhancement project to prevent fire and sup-
press fires, rehabilitate public land affected or altered by
fires, and provide disaster relief, including—
(1) a project relating to the National Fire Plan;