A small group of people in their teens and early twenties is camping on a distant plot of federal land down a bumpy dirt road in southern Wyoming. The members of the Wyoming Conservation Corps are finding ways to entertain themselves.
“I get to occasionally bring out my guitar or my binoculars. I have a trivia game on my calculator that I brought out here, too,” said Achilles Hennessy, who recently graduated high school. “It's a great little feeling to just be away from things.”
But it’s not all fun and games. This group rises with the sun to start working. They use a large jackhammer to pound wooden stakes into a muddy streambed, chop off any excess lumber and gather sagebrush and branches to weave between the stakes. The project mimics beaver dams, and Hennessy said the process can work quickly.
“By the time we're getting halfway done with the dam, I'm already, like, up to my ankles on a path that used to be dry land,” he said. “It’s crazy how effective these things are.”
This project – known as Muddy Creek – is one of several around the Mountain West that are getting a boost from recent federal spending packages, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will spend $161 million on ecosystem restoration projects in 11 states to create more resilient habitats for local plants and animals.
At Muddy Creek, poor land management and grazing practices degraded the area decades ago and dumped harmful sediment downstream to tributaries of the Colorado River.
Nick Walrath, a manager for project partner Trout Unlimited, has been working on restoration since 2006. He said the structures the Wyoming Conservation Corps are building help create an oasis in a desert landscape.
Muddy Creek is home to four types of fish and hosts pronghorn, sage-grouse and several migratory bird species throughout the year.
“In this type of climate that has extreme drought or extreme flows, like we saw this year, those beavers do a lot of work into just kind of leveling that off and making it more habitable,” Walrath said.
The federal money helps pay for labor and equipment. For Walrath, the cash injection means he can build more structures in a shorter period of time.
Doug Linn, Resource Advisor at BLM Wyoming, helped coordinate a lot of the spending efforts. He said projects like Muddy Creek – which have a lot of partners and are shovel-ready – are strong investments.
“We can do little random acts of conservation here and there,” Linn said. “But until you get some sort of connection, you don't really achieve resilience. And I think that's what is different here. We have an opportunity now to have a legacy impact.”
Infrastructure money is going much further than ecosystem restoration. It’s also expanding broadband service, plugging orphaned wells and conserving water. Biden Administration officials have said that the money will contribute to combating climate change and bring jobs to rural communities.
Yet, the federal packages have their critics – like Renny MacKay, policy director for Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon. He said Gordon, who touts fiscally conservative values, struggled with the idea of spending so much.
“As these acts passed Congress, his line was, ‘We're borrowing dollars from our great grandchildren.’ Because that's what we're doing with deficit spending,” MacKay said. [But] if Wyoming passes on these dollars, that doesn't mean the dollars don't get spent. That just means they go to other states.”
MacKay said the governor has been prioritizing projects that are important for the state economy, like energy, education and highways. He noted another issue: A lot of federal money gets doled out via competitive grants, which can put rural communities at a disadvantage.
“We know plenty of municipalities where the grant writer may also be the mayor or the city manager,” MacKay said.
To remedy this, Wyoming has been hosting workshops so localities, nonprofits and others can learn how to navigate federal funding processes and get the most out of this opportunity.
Members of the Wyoming Conservation Corps, like 19-year-old Kody Tripp, don’t discuss where their stipend is coming from or policymaking in Congress. Instead, they’re the boots on the ground, gaining experience.
“It's pretty cool to be, like, the end of the cutting axe, which is the progress of these jobs,” he said.
Hennessy added: “It feels like you’re a part of something bigger.”
Money from these federal spending packages won’t be fully spent for years. Still,the dollars are already making a mark one stream bed at a time.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
