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Welcome to the Conservation Caption Competition, Fall 2012 Edition. Every second Monday between now and December 7, I'll be posting a photo to Facebook and calling on you, gentle reader, to caption it.

Captions are due by 5 PM Wednesday. The winning caption, as chosen by our designated caption quality evaluator, SCA intern Danielle Thompson, will be posted here and on Facebook Friday morning. The author of the winning caption will receive a small SCA prize package sent via pony express (or, more likely, the Postal Service). Yay! Prizes!

Now, please get over to our Facebook page and caption this photo of a marmot:

The marmot doesn't lie: Entries should be posted as comments, either here or on Facebook.

Special thanks to SCA national program partner Dr. Pepper Snapple Group for making the Fall 2012 Conservation Caption Competition possible.

Click here for the full rules.

From the Mount Rainier National Park Volunteer Newsletter September 2012.

We would like to highlight a special intern this summer to help show how much the park relies on and appreciates our volunteers. The east side Backcountry Intern through the Student Conservation Association, Kris Youtz, was first on scene to an emergency call in the Glacier Basin area in the past month. He effectively and professionally assessed the situation, used his Wilderness First Responder training, contacted back up and assisted with the carry out. This is not the first time this season we have had out volunteers help in a SAR situation. We would like to show how much we value our volunteers at Mount Rainier. We appreciate every volunteer for their service and commitment to the park and treasure the relationships we have built with them! Thank you all!

Related Video - Mount Rainier National Park: The 21th Century Volunteers

Join us this summer as we follow the lives of SCA members from coast to coast. This year we will drop in on more than a dozen members from Bear Brook, NH to Kenai Fjords, AK

From Facets of a Field: Telemetry work and New England Cottontails transporting, by Venice Wong, SNE-NY Bight Coastal Program, FWS CDIP Biology Intern.

I needed to know for certain that this was the route that I'll continue, at least until my body decides that enough is enough. I'm guilty of being a little reckless and maybe a little bit of a hero when it comes to manual labor. These are some reasons on why I decided to give another side of conservation a shot. These are things that I never thought about but knew was part of the conservation mission... continue reading

Thousands of surf fans entered to win a surfing weekend in Santa Barbara with Lakey, and we gave away of Lakey-autographed gear every day of the event. We’re announcing here for the first time that our Grand Prize winner is Tessa R. of Long Beach, CA. “I’m really surprised. I never win anything!” she told us.

Tessa is a competitive swimmer as well as a surfer, and says she looks forward to meeting the USO champ. “I think professional female surfers are awesome,” she says. “They surf the big waves just as well as the guys do. They’re amazing.” After watching Lakey, we couldn’t agree more. Congratulations to Tessa and special thanks to all who entered. If you are new to the SCA community, continue reading to see how others are working for the planet and see which of our conservation service opportunities is right for you.

With longboards, shortboards, skateboards, and three SRO concerts, it was a wild scene at the Nike US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, CA – but SCA helped to ensure it was a clean scene, too.

SCA volunteers and staff removed copious amounts of litter from the beach which, as our own Joe Thurston tweeted, may have otherwise been headed to “one of those gargantuan offshore trash islands.” Seventeen-year-old world class surfer and SCA spokeswoman Lakey Peterson led the week’s biggest project, a Saturday sweep that left HB good to go for Sunday’s surfing finals, where Lakey absolutely rocked the house.

The Santa Barbara native scored a near-perfect 19.76 on her way to winning it all after finishing second in last year’s event and first in the Junior Division. Moments after she was carried off the beach by a buoyant mob, the new US Open champion found other reasons to celebrate. “I am so stoked that everything with SCA worked out so well!” Lakey shouted.

The beach clean-ups were a major success, SCA handed out more than 20,000 “Get On Board” wristbands with directions to our social media site: jointhesca.org, and our booth in the Festival Village drew daily crowds pumped about SCA crew and intern positions. We salute Lakey for an awesome victory and her generous support, and thank all the folks at IMG, Nike, Rainbow Environmental Services, and our super volunteers, especially the team from the California Conservation Corps.