Last updated: August 23, 2024
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NPB's First-Ever Climate Conservation Corps Crew Completes One Year of Service!
In August 2024, the National Parks of Boston (NPB) said goodbye to its first-ever Climate Conservation Corps (CCC) crew.
Five young professionals – Olivia Smith, Ellie Bychok, Evan Paris, Rachel Muller, and Mason Bunker – comprised the inaugural team that has lit the torch for a new crew to take up in early October. Coordinators Rachel and Mason will stay on, but core members Evan, Olivia, and Ellie have just played their swan songs.
NPS Photo/E. Bernbaum
Their exit marks a significant milestone for NPB’s climate work: it concludes an experiment, a pilot run of a critical project that had never before been tried – at least as far as we know.
The Climate Conservation Corps seems to be the only climate corps in the National Park Service, and it’s at least one of the first official climate corps across the US (if not the first) – predating President Biden’s American Climate Corps. When the first members of the American Climate Corps were sworn into service in June 2024, the NPB CCC had already spent nearly a year slogging through muddy marshes and presenting at Boston Harbor Island visitors centers, having begun back in September 2023.
NPB’s Climate Conservation Corps is an innovation that’s uniquely Bostonian too. In their time here, the crew has addressed climate threats specific to the Boston Harbor Islands and historic Charlestown Navy Yard, developing place-specific tools to face the local challenges brought on by the mammoth cloud of concern that is climate change.
NPS Photo/ E. Bernbaum
Salt marsh loss took center stage during the crew’s first few months in action. Boston Harbor Islands' salt marshes are biodiverse ecosystems that serve as habitat for a plethora of life. They also protect our coastal cities from flood surges as they buffer against severe waves, and they're highly effective at carbon sequestration to boot, making them important factors in countering climate change. Because they sit at the edges of the harbor islands, however, these salt marshes are vulnerable to damage and drowning from intensifying storms and sea level rise. The equivalent of two soccer fields of marshland disappears every hour due to these and other factors.
NPS Photo/E. Bernabum
Trudging through marshes in thigh-high waders, the CCCs spent their autumn mapping current marsh extents on the Boston Harbor Islands. They then identified sites where we can expect to see new marshes form and laid the groundwork to monitor conditions at those future sites. To monitor the conditions of standing marshes, the CCCs captured photos of specific marsh sites during each season, launching a long-term photo monitoring project that will track change over time.
Charlestown Navy Yard’s new, climate-resilient plant palette now serves as a blueprint for future planting and landscape care thanks to the CCCs too. After the removal of the longstanding tulip tree beside the Navy Yard’s Commandant’s House, the CCCs developed landscape guidance based on factors like drought and salt tolerance to inform climate-resilient options for a replacement. The crew launched an Earth Month competition in April to urge park staff to use greener practices at home, and during their celebratory award ceremony at the month’s end, they planted “Sylvia,” the Navy Yard’s newest Black Gum tree (Nyssa sylvatica).
Outreach and education was also critical for the CCCs, who talked with over 1500 park visitors about the climate during their service. Presentations, online engagement activities, climate-haiku-writing activities, and "pebble polls," where people vote for their favorite shoreline adaptation design, numbered among their many popular projects.
NPS Photo/R. Vincent
In addition to these significant key achievements, the group also conducted energy efficiency assessments and carried out individual projects.
Evan inspected bluffs across the harbor for suitable places to host the rare native plant species seabeach dock (Rumex pallidus). Olivia mapped data from coastal breeding bird monitoring data banks dating all the way back to 2007. Ellie used the application "iTree" to determine carbon and stormwater sequestration values for local trees in Charlestown Navy Yard and Bunker Hill Monument and then calculated the equivalent money saved because those trees exist.
Their collective work culminated in a multifaceted approach to tackling climate change, equally centering understanding, mitigation, adaptation, and communications.
As Evan, Olivia, Ellie, Rachel, and Mason concluded their pilot run of this program, they cemented this young yet impactful project as a new pillar in the science and stewardship management of the National Parks of Boston. They also leave behind a legacy of promise as well as plans for critical future climate work.
Our park staff are sad to see the CCCs go, but we’re equally energized by the investments they have made in the sustainability of the National Parks of Boston. We all look forward to watching the next moves they make in the worlds of bird conservation, climate adaptation, and climate communication.
To quote a hopeful climate haiku, written during a CCC pop-up program,
Action and Justice
Together will fix Boston
One day at a time.
Now, we look to October’s new arrivals with hopeful anticipation, waiting to see just how they carry the torch, how they, with the help of Rachel and Mason, will continue to transform climate change readiness at the Boston Harbor Islands, and indeed, how they will contribute their mark to the climate action community at large – a collective truly greater than the mere sum of its individuals.
NPS Photo/ E. Bernbaum