For the last fourteen years Aldo Leopold Charter School (ALCS) has been awarded a Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) grant that provides paid internship positions for 40 youths. This year the YCC crews include the following: archaeology education and site watch, trail building and reconstruction, garden and landscape, eco-monitoring, and mural design and installation.
YCC crew sets a rock: Trail crew members (left to right) Leonardo Rodriguez and Indigo Crockett (Courtesy Photo)This season the trail crew has focused on redesigning a portion of the Boston Hill trails near the Spring Street trailhead. The current trail is formed on bedrock, and that, combined with the steep grade, has made the tread susceptible to erosion. Last summer’s monsoon season swept the trail surface clean, creating a challenge for hikers and a potential flood hazard for city streets below. The crew has implemented an increased number of switchbacks to ease trail access and to mitigate flooding.
“Built to last,” Jon Bjornstad said, while guiding his crew in the placement of a boulder. “Trail crew happens slow,” he laughs. Project ideas for all crews were compiled and submitted in the spring of 2018. This particular trail reflects the cooperation of town and county agencies and private citizens.
YCC Murals Crew: (From left to Right) Gayla Lacy, Margaret Bailey, Ava Bjornstad, Ajalaa Claussen, Michelle Narvaez, Diana Ingalls-Leyba, Krissy Ramirez, and Patty Countryman (not pictured Katrina Estrada, Tyler Ortiz, Kaleena Reiter, and Bailey Young) (Courtesy Photo)The mural crew, headed by Diana Ingalls-Leyba, is designing an ofrenda mural that will be installed on the south wall of the Silver City Museum. The whole community will be engaged in this mural with an opportunity to create a personal sugar skull, marigold, or butterfly for the background. The focus of the mural is the history of the Silver City Museum.
Gayla Lacy, a senior at ALCS, states, “Being YCC crew leader is more responsibility because I have to keep everyone’s needs in mind. The hardest part is keeping everyone on task when I am also developing my own focus.” Lacy looks forward to attending NMSU in the fall and pursuing a major in general creative media.
Tricia Hurley of Lone Mountain Natives leads the garden and landscape crew. Since January they have been developing a pollinator garden in the 10th Street median west of Grant Street. The crew has also been instrumental in planning Earth Day with Doyne Wrealli of Gila Resources Information Project. Every year, the crew plants at least 500 vegetables for the school lunch program at ALCS. Hurley is applying for a New Mexico Grow grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a raised bed garden on the WNMU campus near Ritch Hall, the planned home of ALCS starting in the 2019-2020 school year.
YCC Eco-monitoring: (From left to right) Tobias Guck, Mike Fugagli, Evan King, Dominic Fugagli, Darynn Smith, Aiden Young, Emily Cox, Zeb Trujillo (Courtesy Photo)Eco-monitoring crew, under the direction of conservation biologist Mike Fugagli, has been busy banding birds, monitoring water quality, and learning about soil composition. After raising nearly $4,700.00 in donations from the community, he looks forward to taking three of the crew members to The Climate Reality Project's Leadership Corps Training in Atlanta, GA, March 14-16, 2019.
According to Fugagli, “the training is led by former Vice President Al Gore, Jr. It will focus on climate justice and the idea that climate change, at its heart, is a civil rights issue."
The archaeology crew supervisor, Marilyn Markel, reports that her crew has been teaching in area elementary, middle, and pre-schools including: El Grito Headstart, G.W. Stout Elementary, Sixth Street Elementary, San Lorenzo Elementary, and ALCS. The crew has reported three incidents of vandalism this year at the Dragonfly Site near Fort Bayard. New Mexico Site Watch, a division of the Office of Cultural Affairs, filmed the crew in action as they gave their site watch training in November. This film has been shown to a variety of state agencies since then.