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…
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