(Washington, D.C.) – In response to President Obama’s call to expand opportunities for summer employment for young people and connect them with the great outdoors, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Nancy Sutley highlighted summer work opportunities for more than 20,000 young people, ages 15-25, in national forests, national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands.

"This program is putting youth to work and making our nation's public lands more accessible," said Vilsack. "With 80 percent of our country now living in urban areas, it is through partnerships like these that we are finding opportunities for Americans to work, live and play on our forests and grasslands and experience America's Great outdoors."

In Utah, the Conservation Corps Bilingual Youth Corps based at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, will expand its Bilingual Youth Corps by hiring 36 bilingual high school students over a two-year period to help complete 50 miles of wilderness trail maintenance and habitat restoration on 135 acres of public lands on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, the Salt Lake Watershed and along the Jordan River Parkway. $70,000 Forest Service; $121,436 non-federal funds.

www.usu.edu/ucc/index.cfm?programs&youthcorps