The President joined 20 AmeriCorps members to build trails and test water quality in the Au Sable River. The AmeriCorps members are participating in a three-year environmental partnership between AmeriCorps, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Student Conservation Association.

After thanking the AmeriCorps and SCA members working with him, the President noted, "Thousands of acres in the Adirondacks are unchanged … not because they were neglected, but because people have cared for the acreage; not because people have said, Well, let's just let it sit. It's because there have been thousands of man-hours put into this area to make it work for the good of all."

"On Earth Day, national service volunteers worked to conserve America's precious national parks and natural resources," said Leslie Lenkowsky, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that provides service opportunities for more than 2 million Americans. "But thousands of AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America participants serve on the front lines of environmental stewardship every day."

The Earth Day activities were part of what the President has designated as National Volunteer Week (April 21-27), to encourage Americans to engage in service projects that benefit their fellow citizens and the common good.

Environmental protection is one of the four main focus areas of national service, engaging young people in hands-on environmental work that encourages an ethic of stewardship. Earth Day is a chance to highlight their efforts and recruit community volunteers for intensive projects.

Some of the highlights of Earth Day 2002 projects involving national service included:

• Nine sites in Montana, where citizens of all ages were directed by AmeriCorps and Senior Corps members in a diverse assortment of environmental activities, including park clean-ups, tree plantings at local schools, a re-vegetation project at Black Eagle Memorial Island, and trail maintenance throughout the state.
• An AmeriCorps*VISTA project in Philadelphia, cosponsored by the Philadelphia Digital Divide Network, to recycle old computer parts that contain harmful chemicals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium that can end up in groundwater.
• A project organized by seniors in the RSVP program of Genesee County, N.Y., that planted native wildflowers in the Genesee County Park.
• A project sponsored by the AmeriCorps Benefits Children (ABC) Literacy Program of Sauk Valley Community College in Dixon, Ill., that combined Earth Day and National Youth Service Day to plant 400 trees on the college campus and at Franklin Creek State Natural Area (see photo).
• A service-learning project in Chicago, where 24 eighth graders from Chicago City Day School collected trash from the Lake Michigan shore, and charted their progress for a presentation to the entire school.
• An AmeriCorps "ShoreCorps" project in Salisbury, Md., that planted more than 1,000 trees on old farmland and clean up coastal bays along the Eastern Shore.