The Upper Susitna Soil and Water Conservation District has been without a board of supervisors or active membership for a number of years. Area resident Mark Gutman has a background in biology, fisheries and wildlife management. After participating in a project to identify juvenile salmon in area wetlands and rivers, his interest in advocating for salmon conservation in the Susitna watershed deepened. While trying to connect with the Upper Susitna Soil & Water Conservation District – the USSWCD – he discovered that they were no longer an active group. Years ago the district manager moved out of the area and conservation districts throughout Alaska lost some of the financial support they had previously gotten from the State.
“It’s been about five or eight years I guess where nothing has really occurred so I’ve sort of initiated the process of reviving the group and getting community members to, um, show their support by reviving the idea of having a conservation district by being a cooperator”
According to the Alaska Association of Conservation Districts’ website, a Cooperator is a land owner or manager who agrees to use conservation planning on their land. In turn, districts can offer special services such as soil testing, forage studies, and invasive species mitigation. After a District has a certain number of cooperators, the next step is to find 5 of those cooperators who would like to serve on the board of supervisors.
Conservation districts can trace their formation to federal legislation passed after the Dust Bowl years in order to develop land conservation and management plans with the land stewards. Alaska’s 12 districts were formed during territorial days and today operate with the help from state and federal agencies such as Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the USDA Department of Conservation Service as well as the non-profit collective of all the districts in the state.
One of the district’s more visible and successful partnerships was the Youth Conservation Corp. That program employed youth in summer land stewardship and skill-building activities such as trail building and invasive species mitigation.
‘Well, I’ve been really interested and amazed to find out that it was a big component of the conservation district and once we are able to get a bigger base of people involved and people that are able to be crew leaders and people who are interested in providing the educational component of what the land stewardship projects are about then, absolutely, we would like to go forward with bringing the YCC back to the communities of Talkeetna and Trapper Creek’
Currently, Gutman has been able to sign up 27 cooperators and plans to gather them together sometime in February. Filling the seats for a board of supervisors, developing a mission statement and planning for future actions are all next steps he’s taking in support of resurrecting the Upper Susitna Soil & Water Conservation District.
You can hear the full interview with Mark Gutman by visiting the December 18 episode of Su Valley Voice.
