In Conversation with Bruce Saito, Executive Director of the Oldest and Largest Conservation Corps

September 11, 2020

Bruce Saito

Bruce Saito

The California Conservation Corps (CCC) is the oldest and largest conservation corps organization in the United States. Founded in 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown, the Corps traces its lineage back to the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, which employed hundreds of thousands of young men around the country in environmental and community projects during the Great Depression. Today, the California Conservation Corps enrolls roughly 3,000 young people every year to work on a wide range of environmental projects, including park and trail restoration, tree planting, habitat preservation, energy efficiency upgrades, and emergency response. Throughout the program, Corps members learn skills, gain experience, and earn credentials, which enable them to pursue careers in conservation and natural resources.

EESI spoke with CCC Executive Director Bruce Saito about his organization’s work. Saito was appointed to the position in 2015, after having gained decades of conservation corps experience in California. His career began as a supervisor at the CCC’s Bret Harte Training Academy in Calaveras County in 1977, and he has also served as director of the Los Angeles Urban Center, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, and board president of the Corps Network.

Q: How has the California Conservation Corps evolved since you first started in 1977?

Saito: Well, it’s changed in a lot of different ways. Just in size and in numbers: we’re located throughout the state now. But in a lot of ways it’s still the same. Corps members are still young folks who want to serve, who want to develop and gain valuable work experiences, and, more importantly, provide services to their community and the environment.

Where we’ve probably grown is that we’re much more sophisticated in the development of the skills of corps members. And I think we’re more diverse. When the CCC started it was really more focused on more rural areas of California, but about 10 years into that we pivoted to focus on urban areas as well.

Q: How does the CCC help corps members with their careers?

Saito: I think it helps them tremendously with their careers. I was asked often when I was younger what I wanted to be. I always thought that was interesting, not having experienced all the different things in the world. I knew I wanted to go to school, but I didn’t know what a doctor does or what a forester does. So, I think that’s the number-one thing, besides just providing basic work ethic and skills training, is that CCC introduces young people to those different opportunities that can be beneficial.

Every day, every project that you go out to, that’s your potential resume, and that’s your potential job interview. You’re working on a California state park, and the park ranger’s watching you, ensuring that the worker’s doing all that’s proposed, but also seeing who’s really engaged and paying attention, who really cares about their work and understands their work. I think those are some of the basic things that young folks can get from these programs, and then it’s up to them to show up to work. It’s up to them to then figure out how they can follow directions and be supervised, as well as work as a team, work together, and accomplish a common goal.

Q: How has the CCC been adapting to expand access to corps programs for low-income or otherwise disadvantaged young people?

Saito: It’s been a priority for me my entire career. I don’t think that’s any different at the CCC. We’ve always worked with opportunity youth, and that was magnified when we expanded into urban areas. We look closely at those areas now that are most affected by COVID-19, which are coincidentally those same areas that have been underserved—they have the highest unemployment rates, the highest high school dropout rates, the worst air quality. I think it’s our obligation, our duty, to work with all folks, but particularly those folks from those underserved communities.

I’ll give you one example. Most, if not all, young folks stopped participating in an in-person classroom back in March. Of those, from the numbers I’ve seen among the young folks I work with, around 20-30 percent haven’t been engaged in distance learning. And it’s not just because they don’t have a computer or they don’t have internet access. It’s also because they may have a mom or dad, brothers and sisters, who are now unemployed, or sheltering in place, and their environment might not be conducive to learning. It’s not easy to sit in front of a computer for two or three hours, let alone work or try to study in a crowded and distracting environment.

So those folks haven’t been in school since March, and now they’re not going back to school in September—that’s seven months. It’s going to take programs like CCC that can offer a high school diploma as well as job training and work experience to get some of them back on track. I think there are a lot of opportunities for CCC to engage and embrace and recruit those young folks who are going to fall through the cracks and drop out of the system.

Q: How does the CCC interface with federal land agencies?

Saito: We typically work with federal, state, and local agencies and departments. Maybe close to 20 percent of the total CCC work is with our federal partners. A lot of our federal work is with the U.S. Forest Service, particularly with emergencies, as well as fuel reduction, hazard reduction, and reforestation. Corps members get to see how the Forest Service operates by working on those projects, and we’re very active in providing connections to work with the U.S. Forest Service.

We also work closely with the Bureau of Land Management. One of the coolest things we worked on a year and a half ago with BLM is an all-women’s fire crew, which is still operating. They’re out at a fire today. And many of those women last year got hired by BLM.

It’s not hard to do work with the National Park Service. It’s not hard to do work in Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon—some of the most beautiful national parks in the world. Those areas are great opportunities for young folks. And we really cherish our partnerships with these federal agencies.

Q: What do you think of recent talk in Congress to restart a federal Civilian Conservation Corps?

Saito: We see op-eds about expanding or recreating the Civilian Conservation Corps all the time. But we don’t need to create a new Conservation Corps. We don’t need to create a new program. We need to leverage and support and strengthen the 130 conservation corps that already exist. In some cases, though, like in southern states where there aren’t many corps, it’d be appropriate to expand or support a new or aspiring conservation corps. The Great American Outdoors Act, which was passed this summer, says there’s going to be $1.9 billion a year for the next five years to address deferred maintenance issues on federal lands. There are existing corps that were shut down, or were affected by COVID, and they’re ready to do that deferred maintenance work. So, we need to strengthen those existing programs, but we don’t need to create a new Civilian Conservation Corps. They are already here.

Q: What do you think is next for the CCC and the broader corps movement?

Saito: I’ve been doing this for 44 years, and I want to see corps all over the United States—all over the world. It’s a thing that works not just in California, not just in New York, but it works in Iowa, it works in the South.

There are communities throughout the world that can benefit from conservation corps. It’s the same basic kind of content: you’ve got young folks who are eager and want to do something, and you have a country or a community that has natural resource challenges, whether it’s Redding, California, or the Philippines. Those two things aren’t going to go away, and as we deal with climate change there’s going to continue to be a great need for conservation corps.

Interview by: Joseph Glandorf and Amber Todoroff

This interview was edited for clarity and length.