earth team

A special Earth Team volunteer group was recently formed to benefit Ross Barnett Reservoir, in central Mississippi. Keep the Rez Beautiful was created by an NRCS employee in late 2010 to promote conservation and water quality in the reservoir.

Earth Team is the volunteer workforce for USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Earth Team volunteers help get conservation on the ground on private lands across the nation, and the Ross Barnett Reservoir group will help further NRCS’ work in this critical waterway.

This spring, Earth Team volunteers with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) surveyed approximately 300 hundred acres of remote Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and private lands north of Villa Grove, Colo., looking for Gunnison sage-grouse, a ground-dwelling bird considered a keystone species in this habitat.

Employees at the Stephens Federal Building in Athens, Georgia, celebrated the People's Garden planted in April with an educational lunch session in the garden.

Deborah Callahan of USDA Rural Development and a recent graduate of Georgia's Master Gardener program demonstrated composting and explained the function of red worms. Amanda Tedrow of Cooperative Extension Service answered questions about vegetable gardening. Kathy Peters A Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Earth Team volunteer was available to discuss plant propagation and distributing information on backyard conservation.

Mike and Jill Viafore are crafty. This past summer, the couple designed and built a portable demonstration house to educate the public about the benefits of rain barrels and rain gardens at exhibits and fairs.

Tulakemelwa Ngasala is a Tanzanian civil and water resources engineer currently living in Michigan. While in the United States she is caring for her three young girls while her husband works toward his Ph.D. in geology at Michigan State University.

Earth Team volunteer Steve Eckstein’s computer work is helping North Jersey Resource Conservation and Development Council (NJRC&D) improve water quality in a big way. He’s also helping farmers get conservation funding needed to improve their land.

Earth Team is the name given to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service volunteers. Earth Team volunteers work side by side with Natural Resource Conservation Service employees on conservation projects to improve their local environment.

Earth Team volunteers have helped transform a neglected area at a county fairground into an attraction experts say will help boost tourism and the local economy in Mariposa, Calif.

Earth Team is the name given to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service volunteers. They work side by side with NRCS employees on conservation projects to improve their local environment.

When landowners have resource problems, they turn to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and our conservation partners. And when NRCS has challenges, we often turn to our Earth Team volunteers for help. Our more than 30,000 volunteers assist us with conservation planning and technical consultation, outreach and communications, clerical services and hundreds of other tasks.

This is National Volunteer Week and it is the perfect time to recognize our Earth Team volunteers. They do a lot for this agency and our national landscape: They work shoulder-to-shoulder with our conservationists, partners and technicians. They make us a more productive and effective agency and they help create a climate where private lands conservation can continue to succeed.

When you’re Robert Mosier, it’s easy to be green. He’s a native of Greensburg, Kansas; the community totally leveled in 2007 by a devastating tornado and rebuilt “green” by USDA and other federal agencies, state and local entities, nonprofit organizations and individuals like Mosier.

Volunteers are helping to turn an old industrial area of Muncie, Indiana into a wetland where wildlife thrive and people can connect with the outdoors.

Since the John M. Craddock Wetland Nature Preserve Team started its work on the site in 2009, wildlife has moved in, plants are flourishing and insects are buzzing. Now, the buzz in Indiana is about a national award recently presented to the volunteers.