Vegetation Monitoring Team Member - Gulf Coast Network

Summary

American Conservation Experience, a nonprofit Conservation Corps, in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS), is seeking ONE Vegetation Monitoring Team Member to monitor and protect significant natural resources in National Parks as part of the NPS Gulf Coast Inventory and Monitoring Network (GULN).

For more information about ACE, please visit our website.

May 18, 2026

November 14, 2026 (or 26-weeks after start date)

* a 26-week minimum commitment is required *

Stationed at GULN office in Lafayette, LA.

The Gulf Coast Network is one of thirty-two Inventory and Monitoring networks nationwide. The network monitors natural resources in eight national parks, spanning from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.

Habitats in the network's parks include rich southeastern forests of hardwoods and pines, Black Belt prairie, barrier islands and seashores, coastal fresh to brackish marshes, cypress-tupelo swamps, pine savannas, loess Bluff lands, and the dry scrub and grasslands of central and south Texas.

For more information about The Gulf Coast Network please visit the parks website.

This is a 26-week position, working with the NPS Gulf Coast Network (GULN) as a member of a team that conducts field-oriented natural resources monitoring.

Primary duties include assisting GULN staff with a variety of field-oriented projects, including:

• Terrestrial vegetation monitoring in Gulf Coast Network parks, including data collection in long-term monitoring plots in forests, grasslands and scrubland;
• Organizing and packing field equipment to support monitoring teams of two or three;
• Entering and quality-checking monitoring data using in databases and spreadsheets, including Microsoft Access and Excel;
• Field operation and basic management of Global Positioning System (esp. Garmin) instruments and data;
• Occasionally providing field and data management assistance for other long-term monitoring projects, such as water quality monitoring, Texas tortoise monitoring, and amphibian monitoring ;
• Occasionally assisting with formatting and editing technical reports produced by the Networks, using Microsoft Word;
• Occasionally assisting with creating Geographic Information System maps (with ESRI's GIS Pro software) to be used for natural resource inventory and monitoring projects.

This individual placement is meant to facilitate professional development and promotes exposure to land management agencies and networking with professionals. This could include gaining experience in different conservation fields and shadowing different work groups.

The ACE Member will work 40 hours per week on a schedule that alternates between a week of fieldwork followed by one to several weeks that are predominantly office work. For fieldwork, hours will vary depending on project requirements, with overnight travel required for most field trips. Fieldwork days may last 9-10 hours and start before 8:00 AM, with extra hours accumulating towards time off at the end of the week or during the following week.

For office work, working hours are usually 8:30 AM to 5 PM Central time, with exact hours somewhat flexible.

The duty station for the ACE Member will be the GULN office, in Lafayette, Louisiana. About 40% of their work will require overnight travel. Travel and per diem costs are covered. Overnight travel will most often be to one of the eight Gulf Coast Network parks:
Big Thicket National Preserve, Barataria Preserve of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, Vicksburg National Military Park, Natchez Trace Parkway, Gulf Islands National Seashore, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park, and Padre Island National Seashore. The majority of fieldwork during summer 2026 is planned for the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. Occasional overnight travel to training/meeting sites may also be required.

Living Allowance: The ACE Member is expected to contribute ~40 hours/week and will receive a living allowance of $700/week to offset the costs of food and incidental expenses,
dispersed bi-weekly. While traveling for projects, the member will utilize an ACE credit card to pay for lodging, as well as cover the per diem for meals & incidental expenses NTE $9,000.

This position is part of the Public Land Corps Hiring Authority: Members serving under this agreement must meet the PLC Eligibility Requirements to be considered for this position. Members may be eligible for a federal hiring authority upon completion of their term of service and 640 hours of service. If the duration of a PLC-eligible term is not long enough for Members to accrue 640 hours of service (~16 weeks), the total hours served at the completion of the term may be eligible to be combined with hours accrued from another PLC-eligible term to meet the 640 hours requirement.

PLC projects also include specific eligibility…