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News Release USDA Forest Service Washington, D.C.
FS-0153	Contact: Heidi Valetkevitch, 202-205-1134

FOREST SERVICE HOSTS 35 EVENTS FOR NATIONAL PUBLIC LANDS DAY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2001 -- U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service will celebrate National Public Lands Day this week by hosting 35 conservation events nationwide, including a reunion today for Civilian Conservation Corps alumni at Camp Roosevelt, George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, Va.

"National Public Lands Day is an excellent opportunity for the nation and Forest Service employees to work together to improve the land," said Dale Bosworth, Forest Service chief. "It is a time to reinforce our tradition of public-land stewardship in partnership with our communities."

Forest Service Associate Chief Sally Collins will address the CCC group at the Camp Roosevelt festivities. The CCC was a public works program created by President Franklin Roosevelt to revitalize faith in the nation by mobilizing more than three million men to perform conservation work and build the nation’s rural infrastructure during the Great Depression of the 1930s and 1940s in the United States. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC planted 2.4 million trees, erected 3,470 fire towers, installed 89,000 miles of telephone lines and constructed 126,000 miles of roads and trails.

In keeping with the tradition of the CCC, the NPLD event at the Conecuh National Forest in Alabama will rehabilitate a structure at a historic African American CCC camp. At other agency events across the country, volunteers will build trails, improve wildlife habitats and watersheds, monitor endangered species, restore shelters and pick up trash.

NPLD, now in its eighth year, is sponsored by Toyota Inc. and coordinated by the Washington, D.C.-based National Environmental Education and Training Foundation. Partners include the Forest Service and eight other federal agencies: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Bureau of Land Management; Bureau of Reclamation; U.S. Department of Defense; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; National Park Service; and Tennessee Valley Authority. NPLD is also supported by a host of public and private organizations nationwide.

Contact your local Forest Service office to learn more about other NPLD events. For more information on NPLD, visit http://www.npld.com.

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