Feature Story
Conservation with an
Ozarks Accent T
he legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps is alive and well in the Ozarks. Not only if you visit a state or national park like Roaring River, Bennett Spring, or Ozark National Scenic Riverways (just to name a few), where historic structures and infrastructure serve as a monument to FDR’s “Tree Army”, but also in a modern-day version in Southwest Missouri: The Watershed Conservation Corps. The WCC was formed in 2017 by Caleb Sanders, an employee of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks. Sanders was involved in the Student Conservation Association (SCA) and the Friends of the Forest Preserves, which hired inner-city youth to oversee 69,000 acres of nature preserve near Chicago, IL. During his time in both organizations, Sanders was aware of the links between today’s youth conservation corps and the CCC boys of the Great Depression.
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CONSERVATION FEDERATION
“I worked on CCC legacy buildings owned by the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources, buildings that are still in use today. My supervisor and I cut down, milled, and built cabins out of the red pines that the CCC planted in the 1930s,” said Sanders. “I’d love to work on preserving CCC buildings, but that’s a different set of skills altogether.” Nevertheless, the WCC has engaged in work like Roosevelt’s Tree Army. “When our crew worked in the Devil’s Backbone Wilderness of the Mark Twain National Forest re-routing trails, that is like stepping back in time,” said Sanders. “We work with crosscut saws and no chainsaws, very similar to the way the CCC did it.” (Chainsaws are prohibited in a wilderness area due to the Wilderness Act of 1964.)
Caleb Sanders, WCC Director, shows two young volunteers how to correctly plant a tree as part of a tree-planting project by the James River Basin Partnership along the Wilson’s Creek Greenway Trail, December 2020. (Photo: Todd Wilkinson)
