Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards

Stewardship (Field Crews, Rangers, Specialists): SAWS created 16 new jobs this year, hiring seasonals across the country to steward wild public land in the southeast as wilderness field crew leaders and members, wilderness rangers, and wilderness specialists. Among many stewardship highlights, SAWS cleared 28 miles of trail of vegetation, removed 1063 downed trees, and installed 186 wooden and stone steps. Our stewardship staff removed a whopping 799 pounds of trash while collecting important wilderness data and connecting with 3232 visitors in the field. In addition to SAWS mighty presence in the field, wilderness specialists also completed 52 technical wilderness character documents including detailed narratives of special wild places as well as scouring files and databases to compile key information and data about these places that will form a baseline for monitoring wilderness character indefinitely.

Training and Education: SAWS planned, organized, and executed the Southern Region's Wilderness Skills Institute (WSI), a free regional traditional tools and wilderness training for federal agency staff, partners, and volunteers across the southeast. SAWS co-hosts WSI with the U.S. Forest Service and Appalachian Trail Conservancy. In 2023 we were able to offer 8 separate courses for approximately 100 participants across 21 partner organizations and 11 national forests, and for 64 first time participants. In addition to WSI, SAWS was able to award another 134 crosscut saw certifications across the country as SAWS was sought outside our regular bootprint. We executed another 9 training courses including crosscut saw, wilderness 101, wilderness values, trail maintenance, and trail design and construction.

Partnership and Outreach: SAWS participated in or hosted 78 stewardship events with 35 being volunteer, 26 education, and 17 community events across our bootprint. SAWS accumulated 36,900 stewardship hours that covered 9 states and 45 wildernesses in 2022 alone. One large outreach event SAWS plans and co-hosts is The Bridge Program, a candidate hub focused on people of color and underrepresented backgrounds in the environmental sector. We offer career navigation support, professional development, networking with like-minded candidates and intentional employers, as well as vetted job posting opportunities. The Bridge Program worked with hundreds of underrepresented candidates and helped them secure a wide range of environmental jobs in communications, policy, law, operations, sales, development, philanthropy, human resources, and more. We also interacted with 26 teachers and 150 students in public schools and community events.