Global engagement

Poverty, limited job opportunities, and ecological challenges drive people—especially youth—to leave their communities. Migration strains families, economies, and ecosystems. To help mitigate these pressures, the Forest Service partners to strengthen local livelihoods, build resilience, and foster stewardship of natural resources.

The Forest Service and partners deliver job training and Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) programs around the world that cultivate leadership at the local level, encouraging youth and adults to remain in their communities as stewards of economic development and resilience.

The Forest Service helped to start YCC Honduras in 2017. The success of the program to make a positive impact on the lives of young Hondurans has drawn more partners from the public and private sector.  Those partnerships have created more opportunities for graduates, including university scholarships, national park training programs, and more courses for the program’s curriculum. Graduates receive national accreditation from the Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional and join a network of alumni who have become conservation leaders in their communities.

In the hills north of Beirut, Lebanon, a group of young citizen scientists collects the footprints of small mammals using contact paper and charcoal. They are hoping they might find signs of forest dormice, a fluffy-tailed, squirrel-like animal that thrives in dense forests. But forest dormice are no longer common in Lebanon, where rapid urbanization, unsustainable forestry practices, and, increasingly, wildfire have reduced Lebanon’s forest cover to just six percent, leaving a highly urbanized population vulnerable to flooding, compromised ground water and polluted air.

Since 2011, the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative (LRI) has been trying to counter deforestation and nurture a new generation of conservation leaders. With support from the Forest Service, LRI has planted more than 1.5 million native tree species throughout Lebanon, with an average survival rate of 76 percent. In Rachaya, one of many reforestation sites and just 10 kilometers from the Syrian border, hillsides are green again along a 35-kilometer corridor. Families now picnic in the shade of eight-year-old pine trees. When the trees reach 10 years, the municipality will lead the harvesting of lucrative pine nuts.