Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards

Stewardship: SAWS created 25 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. Stewardship in review: -cleared 61 miles of trails -removed 1,201 downed trees -installed 216 wooden and stone steps -removed 851 pounds of trash Further, wilderness specialist completed 17 technical wilderness character documents including detailed narratives of special wild places. This key information provides a basline for monitoring the wilderness characterics of that area indefinately.

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. We held 4 - in person courses for 60 participants including 19 partner organizations representing 7 national forests. 38 crosscut saw certifi- cations were awarded including 10 advanced certifications. In addition to WSI, SAWS was able to award another 90 crosscut saw certifications across the country as SAWS was sought outside our regular bootprint. We executed another 13 training courses including crosscut saw, wilderness 101, wilderness values, trail maintenance, and trail deFurther,sign and construction.

Partnership and Outreach: SAWS participated in or hosted 51 stewardship events with 20 being volunteer, 11 education, and 7 community events across our bootprint. SAWS accumulated 38,990 stewardship hours that covered 9 states and 51 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.