Let’s invest in natural resources

As the Depression deepened in the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt had an idea: put an army of eager job seekers to work improving federal lands, forests and parks. His brainchild, the Civilian Conservation Corps, revived the nation’s outdoors and created desperately needed employment.

It’s time to resurrect the concept with a fresh spin. In California’s case, the threat of wildfire is a near permanent worry in a state where 45% of the land is in federal hands. In addition, the soaring jobless rate brought on by the COVID19 pandemic is hitting hardest those under 30, the prime age category to tap for the physical task of forestry work. Putting people to work on a needed assignment works both here and across the country.

Any plan to spend big on a federal project will run into political trouble, as Democrats are finding with a $3 trillion stimulus bill to aid cities and state finances. But this rebuilding proposal comes under the partisanfree heading of infrastructure. It’s public spending that can benefit everyone and should draw support from across the voting spectrum. The nation could use more of that spirit in a dire time.

The plan, dubbed the Restoration and Resilience Jobs measure, is collecting congressional names for now. The $125 billion spending package is divided among a half dozen topics including wildlife habitat, land conservation and reclamation work. Abandoned coal mines, wetlands used by migrating birds and fishrearing streams would get attention. The projects range from the Everglades in Florida to the Southern California desert. A total of 76 members of Congress have signed on, including 16 from California.

The possibilities are easy to see. In San Francisco, Aquatic Park needs an updating from improved beachfront seating areas to improvements to a row of seven historical ships that need maintaining. As stayhome rules give way to a more open city, visitors are flocking to this stretch of beach and pier fronts managed by the Park Service. An overhaul would be welcomed by the public.

But most of the federal land is in rural areas, where fires are fed by overgrown vegetation. The proposal takes note of both this problem and its potential solution. One fireproofing tool calls for prescribed or controlled burns to rid the landscape of undergrowth that can turn a blaze into an inferno as California well knows.

But that tactic needs plenty of prep work and careful oversight once the flames get going. It’s hard, even dangerous, work that young crews of firefighters could be trained to carry out. With a crushing state budget shortfall, it’s too much to expect Sacramento to take on the task as it has in the past. A bill to train and deploy crews working on federal land would be a more complete answer.

Along with controlled burns, additional workers could lower fire risks by thinning forests and widening firestopping breaks. It won’t be just young people swinging axes and shovels. There will be a need for heavy equipment operators and seasoned construction workers as well.

It’s not all backcountry basics. Federal entities such as the National Park System, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have shelves of postponed maintenance and improvements.

In the northwest corner of the state, a coalition of outdoors groups, tribes and local leaders in Del Norte County have developed plans for riverside work, improved camp sites, and tree trimming. In the eastern Sierra, there are other spending needs: dealing with wild burros that chew up the landscape, an updated visitors center in Mono County and improvements to the Manzanar National Historic Site that memorializes the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

Nationally, there’s plenty more to do. Droughts, hurricanes and floods have devastated millions of federal acres, robbing the environment of a chance to bounce back. It will take hard work to revive these estuaries, rivers and forests that span both red and blue states.

There are plenty of worthy causes and interest groups lining up for federal funds as the pandemic continues. The challenge requires a multitude of answers to the shattering damage. Renewing federal lands to keep them safe and accessible in a way that eases a jobless crisis should go on the priority list. FDR would likely agree.

Lauren Hernandez / The Chronicle 2019 A young seal is sprawled out and molting, or shedding its skin and hair, on the sand of Aquatic Park at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.