Short on resources, the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to supply enough forest rangers in the vast 700,000-acre Angeles National Forest to adequately enforce rules about recreation, safety, wildfire prevention and the leave-no-trace philosophy.
Without a funding boost from Congress, the USFS has had to rely on conservation groups receiving grants by way of Los Angeles County Measure A, passed in 2016 as a parcel tax to fund parks and beaches. Last week, the Forest Service announced that a grant from last year of $432,259 awarded to the nonprofit National Forest Foundation will be used to hire eight youth forest field rangers for deployment this spring and summer.
Putting county tax dollars into federal land management and workforce training may be an unusual tack, but this workaround could make a difference in high-use forest areas such as the East Fork of the San Gabriel River and the Oaks Picnic Area north of Azusa, which were devastated by tons of trash and graffiti from an onslaught of visitors in the last few years.
The area got so bad that the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, which includes a large portion of the Angeles including the East Fork, ,was cited on Fodor Magazine’s “don’t go” list, which said the monument was too trashed to visit.
To help with cleanup and more, the forest foundation, in cooperation with the Forest Service and the Hispanic Access Foundation MANO Project, is actively seeking to hire eight field rangers who must be ages 18-25. They will work from May through August in high-use sections of the Angeles, especially on weekends when visitations rise.
Eight field rangers will double the number hired last summer, when the program returned after a five-year absence and hired four field rangers. The previous youth field ranger program ended in August 2018, explained Keila Vizcarra, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, Angeles National Forest, with headquarters in Arcadia.
“You will see them doing a lot of outreach to the community,” Vizcarra said on March 12. “You’ll see them at high visitation sites in the forest, teaching folks how to recreate responsibly.”
Besides the East Fork, she said they may go to other sites often overrun by visitors: Crystal Lake, a rare, naturally formed lake with about 40 campsites 26 miles north of Azusa off Highway 39; Millard Canyon, a popular hiking site near Pasadena; and Wildwood Picnic Area near Big Tujunga Creek.
Many of those chosen as youth field rangers will be bilingual and from cities with high populations of Latino residents and people of color, making it easier to connect with the similar cohort that visit these forest spots. “They will come from these communities, speak Spanish so they will be able to connect at that level,” Vizcarra said.
The San Gabriel Mountains, which are often called L.A.’s playground, borders those living in the county without access to a nearby park — about half of the county’s 10 million population, said Felipe Lepe, the Southern California program coordinator for the National Forest Foundation. Families visit the river, barbecue and play music as an escape from the heat of summer.
The Field Ranger Program seeks to bridge this gap and plays a critical role in connecting diverse local youth to their public lands,” Lepe added in a prepared statement.
Nature For All, a group that has been active in improving the Angeles and supports the expansion of the San Gabriel Mountains monument to include more of the forest’s closer picnic and hiking areas, has been training what it calls outdoor apprentices, part of its Environmental Careers Pathways program, said Belén Bernal, Executive Director.
The idea of the youth field trainees is to augment the U.S. Forest Service field personnel, she said.
“We can help them with the need to have more boots on the ground,” Bernal said.
Nature For All will have six outdoor apprentices added to high-use areas in the forest and the monument by summer. When combined with the other eight, that will be 14 youth forest rangers, a record number.
They will teach visitors how to dispose of their trash and not leave it on the San Gabriel River banks or in the river itself – and not dam up the river, which can kill the endangered Santa Ana suckers.
“We want them to talk to visitors about wildlife and about not leaving a trace,” Bernal said on Friday, March 15. “Yes they can have a good time, but they have to do their due diligence.”
Both the National Forest Foundation and Nature For All’s youth ranger program participants will be taught basic forestry and ecology principles. Vizcarra said the eight field rangers, including two crew leads, would shadow USFS biologists, engineers and rangers to get an introduction to careers in the forest.
“The Field Ranger Program provides paid work experience and mentorship to youth in Los Angeles County who are interested in careers in the outdoors,” said Roman Torres, ANF’s forest supervisor in a prepared statement.
For more information and to apply for the field ranger job, go to manoproject.org.