GATLINBURG, Tenn., Aug. 16, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The Student Conservation Association (SCA), a national force of conservation volunteers currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, today named Sarah Logan Beasley, a 16-year old high school junior from Tallahassee, FL, as its 50,000th volunteer. Sarah Logan has just completed a month of trail building with an SCA crew at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Since 1957, SCA's high school and college volunteers have preserved public lands and restored the environment as biologists, botanists, naturalists and more. "This year alone, more than 3,000 SCA volunteers will benefit from a wide variety of meaningful field experiences and make innumerable important contributions to parks and forests in all 50 states," says SCA Regional Vice President Reginald "Flip" Hagood.
"Sarah Logan Beasley is the latest in a long, green line of young SCA volunteers," Hagood continued, "and her work as well as that of her crew mates and the dozens of other SCA members serving here in the Great Smokies and across the U.S. embodies SCA's ethic of hands-on conservation leadership."
"I have been looking for a program for years now that would give me an opportunity to be a part of something great," Sarah Logan stated in her SCA application. "I want to save the world."
The milestone 50,000th volunteer was named at an SCA Alumni Reunion conducted at park headquarters, an event that also included the presentation of a 50th anniversary award to Great Smoky Mountain National Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson, and an address by SCA Founder Elizabeth Cushman Titus Putnam.
For five decades, the Student Conservation Association's active, hands-on approach to conservation has helped to develop a new generation of conservation leaders, inspire lifelong stewardship, and save our planet. To learn more, visit theSCA.org.
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