How do I rebel? By mirroring the exact positions of a 90 year-old who has never left their hometown, except I also throw in the environment because I have to live with the consequences of their positions and they have those positions because they don’t have to.
At least in Colorado it just means they want animals to hunt. But they also want to privitise all the land, use it for ranching, defund state efforts to protect natural areas, and expand fracking. They don’t hike and they don’t believe climate change exists despite it rapidly endangering those alpine animals.
It’s the same kind of demonic fuck-fuck game they play with terms like “save the children” or “family values”.
edit: Actually, I’m part of a ranger org with some 300~ members. Most of them are boomers and I’ve spoken with dozens of them. Not a single one has been a right-winger. They try to co-opt conservationism for their ranching and hunting, but even the most basic work of stewardship is so far beyond their capacity.
Everything to do with trail maintenance, land stewardship, and protecting/educating hikers. The US Forest Service in this region of the state has been reduced to a single full-time ranger so they rely on volunteers for the bulk of the work.
just musing here, but was the revival of the conservation corps with americorps in the 90s a way to undermine professional conservation labor the same way teach for america was for teachers?
The CCC has always been a reserve army of labour, but with a focus on work that is so unprofitable that the market can’t reasonably do it without the same kind of private-public partnership that’s less efficient than just keeping it in house. Here Americorps is partnered with the county’s workforce development department and county-run conservation corps. HOAs in the mountains can afford to fund private foresters through their watershed coalitions, but my partner is a forester on a contract like that and their unpaid commute is 2 hours each way up and down mountain roads. There’s too much work for Americorps or the USFS to cover and even then the private work is so poorly paid that they’re making like $18/hr without benefits to do wildly dangerous shit.
Since you can’t even really get house insurance up there anymore, if not for Americorps a lot of people would probably take no mitigation efforts and just let their property burn. That’s like an antivaxxer coughing in a room full of immunocompromised people.
It probably differs from area to area, but look up wildland volunteer groups. At least here we have state-level ones, county and city ones, private orgs, ones devoted to specific watersheds and ranger districts, and ones that specialise in different kinds of work/seasons. With mine it’s protecting a specific ranger district so you can use the web portal to sign up for patrolling individual hikes in it or for group days where we might be picking invasive weeds or rebuilding a bridge or doing a guided hike with a geologist member. Most of us are some kind of natural scientist or at least devoted naturalist so it’s super fun to experience nature with passionate experts.
How do I rebel? By mirroring the exact positions of a 90 year-old who has never left their hometown, except I also throw in the environment because I have to live with the consequences of their positions and they have those positions because they don’t have to.
They don’t care about the environment, they just want to live on a farmhouse where migrant workers do their farming for them.
At least in Colorado it just means they want animals to hunt. But they also want to privitise all the land, use it for ranching, defund state efforts to protect natural areas, and expand fracking. They don’t hike and they don’t believe climate change exists despite it rapidly endangering those alpine animals.
It’s the same kind of demonic fuck-fuck game they play with terms like “save the children” or “family values”.
edit: Actually, I’m part of a ranger org with some 300~ members. Most of them are boomers and I’ve spoken with dozens of them. Not a single one has been a right-winger. They try to co-opt conservationism for their ranching and hunting, but even the most basic work of stewardship is so far beyond their capacity.
They’re jealous they didn’t get to extirpate the buffaloes so they want to do the same to wolves lmao
Anyway, what sort of stuff does your ranger org do?
Everything to do with trail maintenance, land stewardship, and protecting/educating hikers. The US Forest Service in this region of the state has been reduced to a single full-time ranger so they rely on volunteers for the bulk of the work.
Cool work, shitty management. :(
just musing here, but was the revival of the conservation corps with americorps in the 90s a way to undermine professional conservation labor the same way teach for america was for teachers?
The CCC has always been a reserve army of labour, but with a focus on work that is so unprofitable that the market can’t reasonably do it without the same kind of private-public partnership that’s less efficient than just keeping it in house. Here Americorps is partnered with the county’s workforce development department and county-run conservation corps. HOAs in the mountains can afford to fund private foresters through their watershed coalitions, but my partner is a forester on a contract like that and their unpaid commute is 2 hours each way up and down mountain roads. There’s too much work for Americorps or the USFS to cover and even then the private work is so poorly paid that they’re making like $18/hr without benefits to do wildly dangerous shit.
Since you can’t even really get house insurance up there anymore, if not for Americorps a lot of people would probably take no mitigation efforts and just let their property burn. That’s like an antivaxxer coughing in a room full of immunocompromised people.
I didn’t even know that existed, how would one find such an org?
It probably differs from area to area, but look up wildland volunteer groups. At least here we have state-level ones, county and city ones, private orgs, ones devoted to specific watersheds and ranger districts, and ones that specialise in different kinds of work/seasons. With mine it’s protecting a specific ranger district so you can use the web portal to sign up for patrolling individual hikes in it or for group days where we might be picking invasive weeds or rebuilding a bridge or doing a guided hike with a geologist member. Most of us are some kind of natural scientist or at least devoted naturalist so it’s super fun to experience nature with passionate experts.
average rocky mountain settler