Kirk Kolangelo is spending the summer rewiring fences, building trails and fixing wild horse corrals for the Idaho Youth Conservation Corps.

The work has been hard but satisfying for the Boise teenager, who is on one of the 39 six-person crews working across the state.

The work is "better than flipping burgers," Kolangelo said. "You make more of a difference in people's lives doing this."

His $7.25-an-hour, 40-hour-a-week income also helps his family through economic woes. Most of the workers in the Idaho Department of Labor program come from economically strapped families. The jobs help families and communities from Bonner County to Bear Lake.

Steve Kordek can relate. The 98-year-old Edison Park, Ill., man worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps in Boise and Grangeville in 1936 and 1937, keeping records and working fire dispatch. He sent most of the money he made home to his family during the Depression as a part of the federal program established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.

"It was the greatest experience," Kordek said. "I just wish we had a national program like that today that took kids off the street and put them to work outside."

Republican Gov. Butch Otter is a long way politically from Democrat Roosevelt. But when Meridian Republican Rep. Marv Hagedorn and Idaho YCC State Coordinator Ben Phillips showed him all the work and success one crew was able to accomplish in 2008, Otter got behind the concept.

Other states had already set up their own youth conservation programs, with many of their teens already working in Idaho, Hagedorn said. He and Otter saw an opportunity to put Idaho teens to work and save the participating agencies money because the teens could go home and sleep in their own beds at night.

"From a conservative's point of view, this is a way they can reduce their costs and keep the money in Idaho," Hagedorn said.

The state had hoped to expand the program slowly by partnering with federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, which paid for tools for the crews. Then Congress in February passed the American Recovery and Restoration Act, the economic-stimulus law. Suddenly Idaho had $2.9 million to spend for youth job programs.

Phillips was ready. He quickly set up 38 more crews statewide using the Labor Department's existing offices and resources.

In addition to the 200 YCC workers, an additional 640 youths were put to work in schools and libraries and in other government roles.

"It's been a wild ride," Phillips said.

The U.S. Forest Service uses 13 crews for projects it identified this spring and last fall. Money is arriving for additional trail projects, and Phillips hopes these projects can keep his crews working next summer. "Now that the federal agencies are ready to spend their funds, we're already in place statewide," Phillips said.

In addition to getting federal, state and local projects done, the program helps teach the teens work ethics, said M.J. Byrnes, a spokeswoman for the BLM's Boise District. Like the first CCC, Idaho YCC workers get more than muscles and money.

"They are learning about conservation," Byrnes said. "They are learning about the issues."

Kolangelo's crew leader, Andrew Miller of Homedale, a University of Idaho graduate, explained how fences on the rangeland where the crew worked near Hammett hinder the migration of elk and deer from summer range to winter range.

"So we're lowering the high wire," he said.

Next week the crew will move on to Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area for trail construction and maintenance.

Miller and crew member Cody Brown of Boise worked at Bogus last year, too. Their work included carrying logs up the mountain to anchor trail switchbacks.

"That's when the real work begins," Brown told this year's new crew members.

In Council, where unemployment has reached 17 percent this year, YCC crews have been pulling noxious weeds like Mediterranean sage for the Adams Cooperative Weed Management Area. Crews have pulled more than 10,000 weeds so far, said Julie Burkhardt, a supervisor.

"This is the first year we've had a crew in our area," she said.

In isolated communities like Council, finding summer work for young people is tough, she said. When they don't get work there, they move away.

"You can't get people to open businesses here because of the lack of a work force, and you can't get a work force because of a lack of businesses," she said.

Hagedorn said the need to service federal lands will only grow as trees grow up, the population increases and hazards like fire, invasive weeds and other threats continue. Thinning forests, fighting weeds, improving wildlife habitat and fixing trails are critical to the health and use of public lands, said Hagedorn, an avid sportsman.

"Those are the kind of things we need to have our kids doing," he said. "We need to show them there are jobs to do outside."

Crew member Brown is proud of the work he did last year at Bogus. Some of the trails he maintained were built when Kordek worked for the CCC 70 years ago.

"I wish this would last year-round," Brown said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484