(Music)
GINELLE HELLER: My name is Ginelle Heller. I am a Workforce Development Manager with Fire
and Aviation in the Southern Region for the U.S. Forest Service. The integrated
Fire and Recreation Internship Program is a joint partnership between the U.S.
Forest Service Southern Region and the Student Conservation Association. The
mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and
productivity of our nation's forests and grasslands.
LAUREL ADY: SCA's mission is to build the
next generation of conservation stewards through hands-on service to the land
this program is all about getting interns outside doing firefighting and
also trail maintenance.
GINELLE: We are training interns to be our future trails
technicians and firefighters for the U.S. Forest Service. We give them two
weeks of training on the front end where they get all their basic wildland
firefighting training. They get their red card, they do the pack test, they get the
basics like first aid, CPR, defensive driving, and then they also spend a few
days in the field learning trails maintenance techniques and how to work
with and care for tools.
REBEKAH GREEN: My name is Rebekah Green and I'm an intern over at
the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.
I studied agriculture in school and
didn't really have any idea about this kind of program - the U.S. Forest Service -
until my last year where I studied fire for a couple courses and was interested
in that but didn't really have any idea of how to break into that kind of thing -
it can be difficult to do on your own and I was looking on the SCA website and
found this sort of new program where I could work in both fire and rec and sort
of get that experience where I didn't have it before, so I decided to apply and
give it a try.
SARAH MIRON: My name is Sarah Miron and I'm an intern on the Daniel Boone
National Forest.
I do want a permanent position with the
Forest Service and I want to be able to go into a hotshot crew.
I studied parks and outdoor recreation and Resource Management so in this case
I get to focus more on the science side with the fire world and get a broader
horizon with the resource management through recreation and fire with this program.
REBEKAH: You get all this knowledge that these real-life people who have had the
experiences deliver to you and can put in their stories and their anecdotes
and then that combined with real fieldwork where you get to go out and do
it yourself and put it into practice is like the most invaluable training I've ever had.
LAUREL: The folks who are training them are professionals in their fields - so
people who have a lot of experience working on fires, people who have a lot
of experience working on trails.
DEBBIE CAFFIN: We're building the next generation of stewards.
This isn't just you know sit in a classroom and learn about it this is go
out and do it. They'll be able to get in it and really understand it and ask
questions and really get a feel for what it's like to be a federal employee and a
public servant, you know to serve our public lands.
SHARDUL RAVAL: The innovative part of this program
with the Student Conservation Association is our ability to hire
through the Public Land Corps Authority, and that allows us to hire good
candidates permanently.
LAUREL: The internship program has been successful we had a
great first year and several of our interns have been hired onto permanent
positions within the Forest Service.
KAYLA PRATT: My name is Kayla Pratt.
I'm a Fire Apprentice for the U.S. Forest Service on the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
I was a math major and an animal biology major. I fell in love with
fire and recreation during this internship and I knew that's what I
wanted to do. The internship helped me get the apprenticeship. I got a lot of
prescribed burn experience and also wildfire experience so that was a bonus
on my resume.
RODRICK MURRAY: The IFR internship definitely helped me get my fire apprenticeship.
Working with the people at Cherokee National Forest on the
trails crew and then meeting different people on the fire detail that I went on
I was able to make a lot of connections and see that fire was a good way to get
my foot in the door in the Forest Service while also making a way towards
being a biologist or ecologist later on.
SHARDUL: It is something really neat that they're
coming in as a cohort. At the end of the day the camaraderie from that team
that they were able to onboard with will be relationships that they build
for a long period of time - those will be the peers that they will depend on
throughout their career.
SARAH: The people I've met here in my cohort we've all became
fast friends and I can already see us keeping in touch and being able to
network with each other throughout the next 5-10 years.
RODRICK: As a group we all are still very close. You make lifelong friends through the internship.
DEBBIE: It benefits the agency just truly because I think it's going to
allow us to have a greater pool of just talented young individuals that are
really engaged and want to be engaged with their public lands.
SARAH: Overall it's been just a great experience