Amah Mutsun Land Trust (AMLT) is an Indigenous-led nonprofit that combines Indigenous stewardship, conservation and restoration, and research and education to steward the lands and waters within the ancestral territories of Indigenous Mutsun and Awaswas peoples. AMLT was formed in 2014 by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMTB), a non-federally recognized Tribe with over 600 members who are the Indigenous descendants of the people who lived for over 14,000 years along California’s Central Coast and survived the Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista missions.

The AMLT Native Stewardship Corps is a work training and cultural relearning program designed specifically for high-school and college-aged Tribal members. This program provides meaningful work and livelihood and is designed to develop the next generation of Amah Mutsun leaders and stewards of Mother Earth, mixing professional and career development with cultural education and support. The Corps supports resource conservation projects, including a long-term fuel reduction and coastal prairie restoration within Año Nuevo State Park.

Civicorps’ technical training program consists of a rotating crew of Corpsmembers in partnership projects with California State Parks in the Diablo Range District. Each training is tailored by State Parks staff to focus on key skills in carpentry, painting, restoration, plumbing, and masonry, along with trail maintenance and fence construction. Corpsmembers will be exposed to a variety of State Park environments and career pathways, gain valuable skills for both generalist and specialized work, and receive enrichment opportunities such as resource awareness training. The internship will have customizable opportunities to suit interest areas, such as historic buildings, forestry, and restoration. Together, these opportunities will provide robust exposure and create a bridge for Corpsmembers to career pathways at our State Parks.

The Natural Resource Summer Internship Program is in partnership with California State Parks’ Orange Coast District. This program will provide aspiring graduate and undergraduate students underrepresented in the sciences an opportunity to gain hands-on experiences in natural resource management at Crystal Cove State Park. The internship program aims to create new pathways for nontraditional students passionate about natural resources to gain hands-on and practical experience, equipping them for future careers within State Parks. Tailored training sessions focus on developing interns’ technical skills, professional demeanor, and confidence for future careers. The program tackles pressing natural resource challenges in the Orange Coast District. Through hands-on projects like habitat restoration and environmental monitoring, we address issues like habitat degradation and biodiversity loss.

Hispanic Access’ MANO Project and East Bay Regional Park District will create pathways for young Latinos to pursue careers in public lands by placing three talented young Latino professionals in substantive, paid six-month internships with the East Bay Regional Park District in 2025.

East Bay Regional Park District manages and operates three California State Parks: McLaughlin East Shore State Park, Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, and Lake Del Valle State Recreation Area. Interns will spend most of their time devoted to on-the-ground work at, and/or program planning for, and/or data analysis for these three state parks. Hispanic Access Foundation, a national Latino-serving nonprofit organization, will carefully curate these internships — recruiting these professionals, providing them with career guidance, managing their insurance, housing stipends, wages and transportation funds, and facilitating membership in a broader national cohort and post-internship alumni network of MANO conservation interns.

LA Conservation Corps’ internship program at LA State Historic Park (LASHP) supports California State Parks’ need to replenish and diversify its workforce and provides work experience and on-the-job training for jobs that pay family-sustaining wages and offer career ladders. The internship program will provide paid work experience and on-the-job training for Corpsmembers and interns at LA State Historic Park and Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Corpsmembers will work directly with park staff to complete work projects including but not limited to landscaping, building maintenance, irrigation systems, and tree planting. Park staff will provide biweekly assessments with feedback on work performance. Program completers get help from transition specialists to apply for jobs and plan their careers, creating pipelines to jobs that they are trained for and will excel in.

Greater Valley Conservation Corps (GVCC) is expanding its partnership with California State Parks, Diablo Range District by forming GVCC youth corpsmember crews interested in natural resources and underrepresented in state parks careers. Corpsmembers will participate in GVCC workforce development programming while completing work-based learning opportunities with the Diablo Range District facilities and natural resources staff. Corpsmembers will gain familiarity with state parks and the skills and experience required to pursue a career in State Parks and public land stewardship. Projects include tree planting, irrigation system installation/maintenance, invasive species identification/elimination, repair and expansion of symbolic rope and post fencing at Brannan Island State Recreation Area, vegetation trimming/clearing, and protecting the Corral Hollow Creek riparian habitat.

Sierra Institute’s P-CREW youth corps program is designed to serve as a pathway to the profession for young adults, providing them with the technical and social skills needed to advance their educational and career pursuits. P-CREW empowers future leaders and resource stewards through the “E’s “of it all (Exposure, Exploration, Education, Experience, and Employment), a process that embraces comfort zone expansion through an intensive five-week program completing an array of stewardship projects. Participants receive training in Leave No Trace, tool use and maintenance, ecology, basic first aid, teamwork, and more.

Through this project, the partnership between California State Parks and Sierra Institute will engage P-CREW on an array of projects with direct ecosystem and community benefits. It will also allow both entities to leverage resources to identify, develop, and deploy solutions to overcome the multifaceted barriers to accessing careers within State Parks and other public land management entities.

The Lake Tahoe Ambassador Program trains and places students in summer jobs in the Tahoe Basin. To promote equity, the program hires low-income youth, who are supported with paid opportunities and pathways for further education and work experience. Participants lead interpretative talks, hand out educational stewardship materials, collect visitor and environmental site condition data, model stewardship through activities like picking up litter, and work working closely with host sites to fill their staffing capacities. Participants are placed in groups at host sites and partnered with a college-level site lead and site supervisor. Each participant also creates a term-long research project that will be presented at a local high school to inspire change after the completion of the program. By empowering local youth to become stewards of their own backyard ecosystems, this program creates a first step in educating the next generation of climate scientists and conservation workforce.

This project is dedicated to empowering the underserved young adults of the greater Sacramento area, fostering their readiness for fulfilling careers in parks management. This two-year outdoor education program provides 90 Sacramento Regional Conservation Corpsmembers (SRCC) with a 40 hour multi-week course led by experienced instructors from Effie Yeaw Nature Center (EYNC) and conducted in parks along the American River from Lake Folsom to the confluence with the Sacramento River.

Leveraging the widely-recognized UC California Naturalist certification credential, we provide an introduction to California’s ecosystems and natural history, the management of natural and cultural resources, and environmental interpretation and education. By co-designing the core curriculum to emphasize career-oriented knowledge, skills, and experiences, we aspire to nurture a new generation of environmental leaders who are equipped to address the unique challenges facing our parks and natural areas. This project will highlight skills in park interpretation/planning and natural resource management.

Audubon Canyon Ranch’s (ACR) Access to Opportunity is a new conservation and stewardship apprentice program designed to serve the needs of historically underrepresented communities seeking careers in conservation and the outdoors. This program is a proactive effort to remove barriers and create conditions leading to jobs and careers in CA State Parks. During our planning process, we will learn from partners and communities about programming, curricula, and experience needs.

Our team includes ACR’s stewardship, science, and leadership staff, State Park partners in the Bay Area District, and our workforce development and community-led program partners. The planning project, and the apprentice program, are centered in our beautiful West Marin preserves on Tomales Bay and Bolinas Lagoon. The project seeks to collaboratively build resiliency in the conservation workforce to create a new generation of conservation leaders receiving thriving wages in jobs they love.

Ecological Workforce Initiative (EWI) and the North Coast Redwoods District (NCRD) are creating an innovative partnership to train new workers and those transitioning from civil construction to create a pipeline into State Parks for laborers and equipment operators. EWI’s Ecological Worker Awareness and Compliance (EWAC) training teaches the ecological context and knowledge workers need to work effectively in sensitive habitats, including a background in ecological concepts and ecosystem components, an overview of environmental laws, federal and state resource agencies, and an appreciation for the workers’ role in resource protection.

NCRD and EWI will build a collaborative partnership with local tribes and community organizations to create a powerful plan for training and supporting workers to build and advance their careers with State Parks and other local environmental restoration employers engaged in stewardship projects within the parks.

Due to structural racism and classism, people in prison are 79% BIPOC and nearly 100% are poor, representing diverse communities that often lack access to CA State Parks (CSP) and careers within them. Insight Garden Program (IGP)’s Career Pathways for People in Reentry (CPPR) Project will ensure that one of the most underserved, marginalized, disenfranchised, and diverse populations–people who were formerly incarcerated–have access to park career training.

CPPR will strengthen partnerships by gathering CSP Districts’ understanding of the need, opportunities, and barriers to career pathways for people in reentry and how CSP, IGP, and other community partners can build and strengthen these pathways.

The Pathways to CA State Parks and the Parkway (P3) Planning Project will focus on the development of a pilot program model that provides multiple experiences for future P3 program interns, with a significant focus on understanding career pathways in Parks and Recreation. The San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust (Trust), in partnership with Millerton Lake State Recreation Area (MLSRA), will collaborate on program model development, engaging the local community to collect input on program design.

The Trust will utilize existing and develop new relationships with local colleges and universities to create a program recruitment pathway for P3 program interns and will gather input from current college-aged youth studying natural resource and recreation-related fields on their experiences and interests in terms of the P3 program design and methods for encouraging youth to pursue careers.

The Santa Monica Mountains Fund (SAMO Fund)’s State Park Interpretation and Education Mentorship Program is a nine-month planning and development effort to create a program that will prepare youth and underserved young adults for careers at California State Parks and in public lands management.
SAMO Fund will design a program that provides job training skills, mentorship, work experience, and career development and prepares participants for park stewardship and operations careers with and in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The program will build on SAMO Fund’s existing workforce development programs and its success as a career pathway employer, in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS). The program will help to ensure that outdoor spaces are accessible, inclusive, and welcoming for all individuals.

The Yurok Interpretation Project elevates Indigenous voices and worldviews in public lands and recreation areas of California State Parks’ North Coast Redwoods District. Historically, Native peoples have been driven from and misrepresented in the landscape, resources and dialogues in State Parks. This opportunity will develop positions where young Yurok Tribal Members can begin their careers in interpretation, education, and recreation fields.

This project will provide participants with relevant work experience, specialized training regarding cultural sensitivity, and expert guidance by State and Tribal interpreters in creating and implementing meaningful public programs. The completion of the project will have created successful ambassadors of cultural knowledge, stewardship and advocates of Yurok natural and cultural resources, and Yurok traditional landscapes. Both the Tribe and State Park will use the resources of this opportunity to assist in the high demand of cultural programming to be offered in the Parks.