A new deal for the American people
It is an overcast, rainy morning as thousands of spectators, merging into a sea of umbrellas, line the broad boulevards of the nation’s capital. Washington, D.C. is about to bear witness to the inauguration of New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt as 32nd President of the United States. The anticipation in the crowd couldn’t be higher. ‘FDR’, as Roosevelt had become popularly known, is seen by many as a welcomed saviour in the turbulent and frightening times the U.S and the world at large is facing.
As Roosevelt waves to the onlookers through the car window, leading the motorcade along Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol, no doubt his mind isn’t wandering far from the monumental task he has just inherited. The country is in the midst of its biggest economic recession. After markets crashed in 1929, over 13 million turned unemployed within a couple of years; roughly one in four working citizens are left jobless. The nation has slumped into a collective depression as abhorrent poverty and starvation have become the new norm.
The presidential election had been hard-fought. Roosevelt was up against sitting President Herbert Hoover, a progressive Republican who had unsuccessfully sought to divert the economic crisis. He had opposed directly involving the federal government in relief efforts. Roosevelt, on the other hand, campaigned on a platform of liberalist policies with a promise of an ambitious New Deal for the American people, coordinated by federal agencies. He won the election, having managed to with the support from an uncommon broad demographic of voters, from conservative farmers in the South to worker communities in the West and the growing middle classes who saw in the president-elect a progressive leader waving off surviving fragments of an outdated traditionalism and taking bold but necessary steps forward to bring the country away from the brink. Roosevelt braved the challenges ahead with undeterred optimism. “The only thing to fear is fear itself” he exclaimed during his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol building.
Roosevelt had set out to rigorously reform the country’s federal institutions and soon new government-run work programmes would be created at breakneck speed to alleviate the menace of unemployment. The programmes became known as ‘Alphabet Agencies’, typically referred to by their acronyms; CCC, WPA, PWA, CWA and TVA being some of the most prominent. The New Deal programmes hailed the start of a new era that saw improvements to the lives of millions of the poorest Americans. At the same time, it marked the start of the biggest ever changes to the U.S. environmental landscape through human intervention.
Thousands of farms were left abandoned across the U.S. in the early 1930s.
Restoration of the landscape was a priority for the new administration. By the early 1930s, the country did not only face social-economic collapse — it was forced to confront a major environmental disaster at the same time. Centuries of unchecked deforestation had caused river banks to weaken with devastating floods as a result. Fish populations in rivers were decimated and the country was also witnessing an uncommon level of wildfires. Furthermore, intensive agriculture had caused half the U.S. landmass to experience various degrees of soil erosion. In previously farm-rich regions such as Michigan, thousands of farms had been abandoned by early 1930s as the land had become unproductive, leaving large swaths of the state as barren. On top of that, there had been growing concerns for white pine blister rust; an unforgiving disease killing off trees in great numbers. Add to this the escalating infestations where swarms of grasshoppers descended onto farmed fields of corn or oats only to destroy them entirely within hours and no surprise that by the time Roosevelt came to power, widespread alarm had been raised over the ‘earth disease’.
The challenges faced by the new president were two-fold: revitalise not just the nation’s economy but simultaneously restore farmlands, kill off grasshopper infestations, eradicate tree diseases, replant forests, restock rivers, tackle wildfires and repair eroded riverbanks. No small task but Roosevelt saw an opportunity and eagerly set out to launch what became — and remains to this day — the largest environmental conservation programme in history.
Plain economic sense
Franklin Roosevelt was no newbie to conservation. He first witnessed its benefits when visiting a small village near the German town of Bad Nauheim, just north of Frankfurt, during a family holiday in 1891. He was 9 years old. The town had for centuries managed its surrounding forests sustainably and in doing so, its reliable annual wood harvest had covered all the town’s expenses. As a result, there was no need for any of the town’s inhabitants to pay taxes. It impressed on the young Roosevelt not so much the idea of protecting nature for nature’s sake, as a notion that properly managing natural resources made plain economic sense.
It was this inspiration that later poised him to improve conservation of his family’s estate at Hyde Park, north of New York City, along the banks of the Hudson River. It was here that he established tree nurseries and became known as the ‘tree grower’; an unofficial title he continued to bear as he was elected to the New York Senate in 1911. Initially, having been appointed president of the Boy Scout Foundation of Greater New York in 1922, he encouraged the national scouting organisation to take a more active role in conservation work and helped the organisation acquire land in New York state to expand its youth summer camp programmes for this purpose. In 1929, Roosevelt was elected New York governor and strongly advocated for a new, statewide conservation work programme.
Our greatest task is to put people to work, treating the task as we would the emergency of war […] but at the same time accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganise the use of our natural resources.
— US President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, inaugural address, 4 March 1933.
By 1931 Roosevelt had initiated the establishment of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), which launched in early 1932 to use men from the lists of the unemployed to improve our existing reforestation areas. Within the first year alone, more than 25,000 unemployed New Yorkers would be active in TERA through paid conservation work. When Roosevelt asked Congress to pass the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act in 1933, just three weeks after his inauguration, he had done the legwork. The act was passed by congressional vote and paved the way for an executive order to be issued only five days later, on April 5, 1933. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was born.
CCC recruitment poster, 1935.
Roosevelt’s Tree Army
Robert Fechner, former labour union leader, was appointed as the CCC’s first director and managed to mobilise thousands of unemployed young men within weeks to set up the first CCC camps. Enrollees were young men between the ages of 18–25 that were willing to work and on the condition they send $25 of their $30 monthly pay back home. They would work at CCC camps to earn, save and alleviate the economic hardship of their families.
Within two years the CCC established 2.912 camps, at first strategically placed in states where Roosevelt’s support had been weak during the presidential election but soon across the entire country. CCC ‘boys’ as they became known were soon involved in all types of conservation work; from running tree nurseries and fish hatcheries to planting trees, fighting wildfires, eradicating diseased woodland and relocating wildlife. The work was coordinated by army officers and LEMs; Local Experienced Men, often foresters. Local communities were often sceptical upon receiving a sudden influx of young men into the local area. CCC boys quickly won over their new neighbours as they assisted in natural disaster relief, bringing food to communities cut off during blizzards and flooding. There was also an extensive operation to fight forest fires. For rural villages, nearby CCC camps soon proved a vital economic lifeline as local trade and tourism grew.
President Roosevelt visits CCC camp no. 350, at Big Meadows, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, 1933.
Public health concerns were an additional driver behind the conservation corps model. Conditions in which many grew up in innercity areas still left a lot to be desired in the early 20th century. The 1920s had seen the establishment of various Fresh Air Funds; private foundations that subsidised vacations in the countryside for urban adolescents, often living in polluted areas and unhygienic housing conditions. The idea that time out in nature could rejuvenate city dwellers physically, mentally and emotionally showed result: almost all CCC boys reported gaining weight, feeling healthier and happier. Attention was also given to personal and intellectual growth. After each day of physical labour, evenings at the camp were filled with vocational training to improve the men’s job perspective. At its height, over 100 different classes were on offer in the CCC, including mechanical engineering, carpentry, welding, gardening, typing and financial budgeting. Classes were not mandatory but attendance levels were typically over 90%.
Young CCC recruits follow a typing class, Virginia, 1933.
The CCC effort was not without its critics. The corps’ activities were primarily focused on conservation of forests and soil regeneration during the early years. However, as the programme became increasingly influenced by state politicians who saw other opportunities, schools started to get built, as well as bridges and hiking trails to open up natural areas to the public. However, conservationists became increasingly concerned when CCC started working on road-building schemes and the construction of infrastructure (even ski slopes) cutting across and destroying parts of otherwise undisturbed forests. By 1937, with the economy back on its feet and World War II looming, criticism of the CCC reached its peak. The number of camps was scaled back and programmes wrapped up. The CCC ran until 1942 when the U.S. entered the war and Congress discontinued funding. Many CCC recruits transitioned straight into the army, with many serving in Europe or the Pacific.
CCC boys relocate beavers from a ranch to a forest watershed location to help conserve the local water supply. Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho, 1938.
CCC Legacy
The Civilian Conservation Corps may not be a name familiar to the public at large today but as the largest conservation programme in history, its legacy is nonetheless profound. A total of 2.3 billion trees were planted by the boys in nine years’ time, 12 for every American living through the Great Depression and accounting for half of all trees ever planted in the nation. Tree diseases were successfully eradicated and trees treated by CCC were found to grow 38% taller and 50% wider compared to the growth rates of only a few years earlier.
By 1942, the CCC had constructed 3.116 fire lookout towers and laid 88,000 miles of telephone lines, greatly speeding up communications to fight wildfires more effectively. Over 75 million fish were reared in hatcheries to replenish rivers and overall 118 million acres of the American landscape were directly altered, conserving natural resources and establishing a network of 800 national parks. Meanwhile, a total of 3 million men served in the conservation corps, with at one point twice as many working in rural areas under the CCC banner than were in the entire U.S. Army.
Beyond the numbers, Roosevelt’s approach had succeeded in cutting across traditional political divides and achieved inter-departmental cooperation where federal agencies would have otherwise been working in silos. The New Deal coalition, a political union of diverse interest groups that led a wave of progressive cross-party initiatives and voting blocs and which dominated U.S. politics for over 35 years, from Roosevelt’s first inauguration in 1933 onwards, is still hailed today as a hallmark for political organising.
The Civilian Conservation Corps planting red pine seedlings, Michigan, 1939.
The parallels between the 1930s and today are stark. The world faces a climate crisis that uproots global security and economic resilience whilst the political conversation is dominated by widening ideological divides. Even more alarming is the growing evidence of the direct influence of climate change and deforestation on the emergence of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. There is an urgent need for a modern-day conservation corps to regenerate nature and CCC history has the power to inspire us to pursue more socially-focused approaches to environmental conservation.
Putting diversity and job opportunities at the heart of green policies can bring prosperity and a renewed sense of pride and identity to otherwise underserved communities. This matters especially today, given the high rates of youth unemployment in coastal regions and the desperate situation in poverty-stricken coastal communities that find themselves increasingly on the frontlines of climate change.
In the Netherlands, a new marine conservation programme has been piloted that is designed along the contours of the CCC model. The Sea Ranger Service is run in collaboration with the Dutch government, trains young people with the help of military veterans and puts them to work to assist in managing Marine Protected Areas and carrying out other marine conservation tasks.
Standing on the shoulders of giants: Sea Ranger recruits (right) continue the legacy of the CCC boys (left).
Sea Rangers
Candidate Sea Rangers are young men and woman, aged 18–29, that undergo an initial bootcamp training in which they are tested on their ability to work as part of a team, assisted in developing leadership skills and offered coaching sessions to aid their personal development. At the end of the bootcamp, a group of recruits is selected to become Sea Rangers and obtain full-time paid employment whilst they follow additional training. The group is diverse: half the Sea Rangers are women and all come from wide-ranging backgrounds. This diversity ensures the programme furthers social inclusion; breaking down traditional social barriers that have persisted into the 21st century.
Sea Ranger recruits undergo physical morning exercises during a 5-week long bootcamp. Rotterdam, 2018.
Unique to this modern-day conservation corps is its form of public-private partnership. The Sea Ranger Service was established in 2016 as a social enterprise, received early cross-party support from Dutch politicians and signed a Green Deal agreement with the federal government in 2018. The agreement recognises the innovative potential of the model and has given the Sea Ranger Service a chance to pilot various conservation activities at sea, contracted by, and in close collaboration with, government agencies. In this way, what is essentially a citizen-led initiative, can become more structurally embedded in national policy, directly assisting government agencies in implementing environmental and conservation legislation.
Sea Rangers plan an upcoming journey at their operational base. Den Helder, 2019.
The Sea Ranger model has been so successful that corporate partners such as consultancy firm PwC, retail giant IKEA and employment agency Randstad, all pledged support. Their involvement has helped shape a new social franchising model with which the Sea Ranger Service now looks to replicate its approach beyond Europe, with plans progressing for implementation in U.S. coastal cities, as well as the UK, Chile, South Africa and Indonesia.
Sea Rangers are employed full-time to carry out ocean conservation tasks.
The need for conservation capacity
In 2009, a group of scientists concluded that only 9% of the current Marine Protected Areas have enough capacity (ie. personnel, ships, funds) to be adequately managed. The legacy of the modern-day conservation movement is at risk of being one of primarily paper parks unless action is taken to rapidly scale up resources that can manage and regenerate protected parks.
Combining social and environmental objectives is key to achieving this. With every new Sea Ranger trained up and each purpose-built Sea Ranger ship constructed, capacity is increased for conservation. However, as individual Sea Rangers gain experience, receive qualifications and transition into a maritime career, they are offered a future perspective. The real impact will be felt far away from the conservation strategy and instead at the local community level.
We were constantly getting into trouble, had run-ins with the police. One day an officer took me aside and said ‘Michael, you’re a good kid. You just have to get away’. I signed up for the conservation corps the next day. Being away from home for the first time, it was swim or sink. The work made us more responsible and disciplined. I started feeling mentally and physically stronger. It made active citizens out of all of us and the nation is better for it.
—Mike Rataj, former CCC recruit interviewed in 1980.
Besides the emergence of the Sea Ranger Service, U.S. based conservation corps style projects have sprung up again since the late 1950s and continue to this day with local activities being organised through the Corps Network. There are growing calls for the revival of nationwide conservation corps programmes with new initiatives started in Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Canada and even Pakistan.
There is growing political support to ensure the lessons of the Civilian Conservation Corps success can help build a sustainable future with youth engagement and job security at its heart. Implementing such a model at a nationwide scale is a challenge but as the Roosevelt administration showed and more recently the Sea Ranger Service and others proved, it can be done. To stick with Franklin Roosevelt’s original mantra: the only thing to fear is fear itself.
