Working on public lands: our next projects!
What is the Badlands Conservation Corps?
The Badlands Conservation Corps (BCC) is a collaboration with the Badlands Conservation Alliance (BCA) and Strengthen ND to bring AmeriCorps field crew members out to work on short-term service projects to improve public lands, the Three Affiliated Tribes National Park, as well as the grasslands of western North Dakota.
What inspired the creation of this new program?
Currently, obviously, there is a threat to our public lands—not just in North Dakota but around the U.S. Throughout our BCA work over the last 25 years, we’ve recognized the need to get youth and young adults more involved in the landscape in western North Dakota. This is an outgrowth of that understanding.
It helps that I’m a former VISTA volunteer. I served two terms with AmeriCorps: a year in Alaska and a year in Vermont. I’ve had exposure to these types of conservation corps in the past and I think that the Badlands Conservation Alliance is positioned well to start the first conservation corps based in North Dakota.
What does BCC plan to accomplish during this project season?
This initial launch season is a result of the last couple of years of work towards the Maah Daah Hey National Monument and our collaboration with partners charged with being the stewards of our public lands, mainly the Forest Service, but also our relationships with Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.
We have a tremendous opportunity to replace the Bear Creek Bridge along the Maah Daah Hey Trail. It’s been washed out for the p ast three years. That’s a unique opportunity. The Forest Service is bringing in a mule train; each region of the Forest Service has a mule train and this particular mule train has not served in North Dakota for ten years.
It’s a unique opportunity for our young people—not to just work on a service project but to also be exposed to professionals. Many of our corps members are college-aged students pursuing science degrees and it’s important for us to expose them to various career possibilities as well as have glorious experiences in the Badlands. We’re going to camp and work in the National Park and the wilderness. By working in the wilderness, we can’t use mechanized or motorized tools, so we’re going to be using hand tools. It might seem a little archaic but at the same point, it’s a beautiful landscape. We’re excited about that.
The tribal national park that’s being created is a beautiful location. They have a tremendous opportunity ahead of them to develop a national park that can educate their people, and get their youth involved with the landscape, and to have a better understanding of the heritage of their people and why it’s important that we care for this landscape which is their ancestral land.
White Butte
I’m the Vice President of the Maah Daah Hey Trail Association Board of Directors and for the last couple of years, MDHTA has collaborated with BCA. We recently hosted an outing up White Butte. There’s been a partnership that’s been created between MDHTA and the Highpointers Club to do some work on the White Butte trail. This is a continuation of that: trying to finalize some trail work that’s necessary to prevent cut-throughs where hikers are doing some damage to habitat. We’re trying to put in fencing to keep folks on the main trail. We’re also going to move a little bit of gravel near a couple of short bridge structures that go over water erosion areas to prepare the trail for the long term.
National Trails Day
One of our volunteer opportunities is to come out on National Trails Day: Saturday, June 7th. There’s seven miles of Maah Daah Hey Trail within the South Unit of TRNP. It’s all in the wilderness area, and as a result, the National Park Service doesn’t have additional staff or a trail crew to handle trail maintenance. BCC and MDHTA are providing a volunteer opportunity to get out on the Maah Daah Hey Trail in the wilderness of the National Park to replace some posts that have been used as scratching poles by our friendly bison, and do brush-clearing along the trail to make it more enjoyable for the trail users.
What are you hoping this year's corps members will gain through this experience?
We live in a very large state here in North Dakota, and many of our corps members are attending university in the eastern part of the state. Almost all of them have never been to western North Dakota—maybe they’ve driven through, but they’re going to be exposed to various careers of interest to them. They’re going to have a tremendous amount of outdoor experience in remote country that very few people ever experience. And they’re going to work with professionals that are very fun, passionate supporters of our public lands. They’re going to get a well-rounded education, and they’ll provide a vital service to the state of North Dakota that benefits the economy which then trickles down to various aspects of our lives. We’re grateful for that. At the end of their 300 hours of service, they earn a regular living allowance as well as an additional $1,565 education award that they can use to pay off student loan debt or pay for future schooling or educational opportunities. It’s a win-win for everybody.
What are some of the challenges you expect to face during this year's project season?
BCA is an incredibly small nonprofit organization. We’re very fortunate that we’ve mobilized our fantastic AmeriCorps member, Spring Bakke, as our Badlands Conservation Corps Project Coordinator. We’re leveraging all of our tremendous partners within USFS, NPS, TAT National Park, but we’re a small organization. We operate off of a shoestring budget. Funding is always an issue. We’re trying to be frugal while at the same time, we’re starting something new, and anytime you start something new there’s challenges and hiccups. We’ve been living through a drought and now in North Dakota we’ve had a stretch of rain—which is great to prevent our wildfires but it’s probably going to make things a bit sloppy and messy, and we’re going to have to be flexible. But we’re going to be outside so we’re going to have a great time.
If we don’t get people out on the landscape in western North Dakota, it’s really easy for politicians to think, “Oh, it’s not being utilized.” But it plays a vital role for many of us in the state of North Dakota. We’re a tremendous outdoor recreation state. We have a lot of people that hunt and fish; our public lands of western North Dakota are a great place to get out and birdwatch, hike, ride horse, camp, mountain bike, and there’s a threat right now to selling off our public lands. It’s gonna start in Nevada and Utah, but let’s not think that it couldn’t come to North Dakota. Our hope is that by getting people working on the landscape through our small conservation corps, we’re going to draw attention to the needs in the Badlands. The Forest Service should have a line item in their budget for ongoing trail maintenance within the Maah Daah Hey Trail. There’s anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 annual users of that trail.
We need support. We need ongoing eyes on our public lands, and we need our politicians and elected officials to know how vital this is to the state of North Dakota. It’s a challenge, but our little nonprofit organization at the Badlands Conservation Alliance is stepping up to fill a void because of recent firings at the USFS and the NPS. We’re doing our part and we encourage those that are passionate about public lands to do their part. Come work with us on National Trails Day (June 7) or installing the Bear Creek Bridge on the Maah Daah Hey Trail (June 18). We invite you out to join us!
What challenges and opportunities does the future hold for BCC?
There's a tremendous opportunity for BCC because of the geographic size of our state. BCC could grow to not only working in the Badlands, but we could have a second crew operating in the Prairie Pothole Region of the middle of the state, and a third crew in the Red River Valley—if we can talk our politicians into supporting AmeriCorps. BCA has developed a great relationship with the Strengthen ND staff and with these AmeriCorps members, that’s a tremendous opportunity for us. We are going to definitely approach the North Dakota Department of Commerce once we get through this project season to talk about the possibilities of how important this youth crew could be to the state of North Dakota. We’re going to highlight it through our pictures and our stories we’re going to tell after this project season. BCA is a very small nonprofit organization. We have around 425 members right now. Federal funding through grants has been frozen. We private foundation dollars, we need membership dollars to grow. As the executive director, I have a dream job—but at the same time, I’m using two of my vehicles to transport our conservation corps crew. We’re donating a tremendous amount of our camping equipment and personal attire. That comes with starting something new, but we need commitments, we need larger corporate sponsors, we need larger donors to come to this work. We’re geographically challenged because of our location in the northern United States. We’re not necessarily thought of as being in the west; we’re definitely not in the east. Our public lands serve a vital role. We need membership. We need supporters.
This is the time. If you don’t stand up now and advocate for public lands, when are you ever going to stand up? Because once they’re gone, we’re never getting them back. We’re not growing more land.
We should really think through the history of North Dakota. We do a tremendous amount of telling the story of Theodore Roosevelt and how much his life was impacted by living in North Dakota and doing strenuous work. As we think about the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library on July 4th, 2026, we should keep in mind that conservation legacy. He’s known as the conservation president. I think he’d be appalled to know that we’re selling off public lands. Yes, he was an advocate for being a steward of our resources and developing smartly—but I don’t think his approach would have been taking a chainsaw to budgets and staffing. That’s my personal opinion.
We need to carry forth the conservation stewardship legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, and our Badlands Conservation Corps is going to do that. We’re going to bring out the next generation of land stewards and leaders, and we’re proud of that. But we need supporters. Thank you.