soil conservation

As an aspiring soil conservationist, Luther Thompson II is eager to dig into future career opportunities. Thompson is a rising senior at Alcorn State University, a historically black land-grant university in Lorman, Mississippi. This is his fourth summer as an intern with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS helps America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners conserve the nation’s soil, water, air and other natural resources.

As the climate changes, and our forests are affected, the need to reclaim impacted areas and restore native species becomes more important than ever. The U.S. Forest Service’s Monongahela National Forest is at the forefront of not only forest restoration, but also helping those landscapes adapt to climate change.

The red spruce forests of the Appalachian highlands are an integral part of the regional biodiversity, providing habitat and food for the northern flying squirrel and the Cheat Mountain Salamander, and the ecosystem supports 240 rare species in West Virginia alone. Additionally, the forests blanket the headwaters of five major river systems upstream of millions of people living and working in the Charleston, West Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. regions.

In the agency’s early days, we used a monthly, 16-page publication called Soil Conservation to share the cutting-edge stories and technologies for taming soil erosion.

It was filled with photos and stories about a pillaged Dust Bowl era landscape, and how our agency, now called USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was working with farmers to make the land idyllic once again.

Teaching people about soil conservation is one of our top goals at the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and fortunately, we have a special helper.

Sammy Soil, everyone’s favorite little clump of earth, has managed to capture the public’s attention for more than 40 years. The little dirt clod, as he is sometimes called, was birthed through rock particles, water, air, leaves and the artistic mind of long-time employee Ernest “Howard” Whitaker.

Sammy Soil started as a water color drawing by Whitaker, who worked as a NRCS district conservationist in Tennessee.