My Public Lands

Innovative Internship Partnership Passes on a Passion for Public Lands in Utah

An innovative partnership in southern Utah, the Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative, is administered by Southern Utah University’s Harry Reid Outdoor Engagement Center. Its goal is to help meet agencies’ operational needs through dynamic internships that train university students, educators, and young people for careers in land and resource management.  The Cooperative has recruited more than 500 participants.

The internship program began in 2008 and hires paid and unpaid student interns as part of the Career Internship Corps program to work as interpreters, natural and cultural resource support staff, in administrative offices, fee collectors, researchers, trail builders, and in other similar jobs.

The students work for public lands located throughout southern Utah and northern Arizona. In some instances, students complete short-term projects for one agency and then move on to another agency. The program allows the agencies to complete conservation projects that would otherwise be impossible.

One of the program’s successes is the creation of the first certified Wildland Firefighter crew in Utah’s university system, formed in cooperation with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State lands.  This crew is now sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Southern Paiute Agency.

Participating partner agencies include the BLM Color County District, Arizona Strip District, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; the National Park Service Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Pipe Spring National Monument, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, and Great Basin National Park; the Bureau of Indian Affairs Southern Paiute Agency; the US Forest Service’s Dixie National Forest; the Natural Resources Conservation Services Cedar City Field Office; Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Recreation- Southwest Region, and Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands; Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah; and Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians.

Projects include repairing recreational trails, monitoring and rehabilitating wilderness study areas, restoring streams and riparian areas, reducing woody fuel loads and invasive vegetation, establishing and monitoring range plot frequencies, monitoring wildlife, and monitoring and restoring cultural resources.

The program places students from specific academic disciplines into corresponding internships and crews. Each intern’s or crew’s project time includes related resource sciences and conservation education. In order to familiarize the students with government policies and prepare them for agency employment, members of the partner agencies serve as guest lecturers and student mentors.

The Cooperative includes high school and college-aged students as members of work crews with an emphasis on recruiting disadvantaged and underserved youth. It also trains college interns and former crew members to be crew leaders.

In addition, the Cooperative sponsors the Cedar Mountain Science Center Youth Camps for almost 500 elementary and middle school students a year. The program immerses students that have not spent much time outdoors in science and nature activities that promote responsible land stewardship and inspire their interest in community involvement.

As the challenges of land management continue to grow, the internship program is a win-win endeavor, meeting agency needs while providing educational and career opportunities for the public land leaders of tomorrow.

BLM-Utah nominated this program for the Interior Secretary’s “Partners in Conservation” Awards. The Department will formally announce those selected to receive an award in January.