So what are you doing on September 26? That is the date of National Public Lands Day and as in years past, more than 100,000 Americans will be volunteering at thousands of public parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. They will be pulling weeds, building trails, hauling trash, and generally doing what they can to polish up our precious public realm.
A project of the National Environmental Education Foundation, this day got started in 1994 with three federal agencies and 700 volunteers. Last year 120,000 volunteers showed up at more than 1,800 sites.
The effort taps into a rising spirit of volunteerism among Americans—an effort being amply nurtured by the federal government. Volunteerism has been a theme in recent presidential administrations. This spring President Obama and Congress began a process to triple the size of AmeriCorps, the federal network of national service programs. At about the same time, the administration launched Serve.gov, an online resource for finding and creating volunteer opportunities. In this difficult economy, when public agency budgets are down, volunteer efforts that help enhance and maintain our public assets are more important than ever
Nowhere is this truer than with our federal, state, and local parks and open space. Fortunately, our strong connections to the land—to parks, playgrounds, gardens, lakes, trails, and natural areas—often compel us to give back and support them in any way we can.
One of the most heartening volunteers and parks stories I know of comes from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm, 1,300-acre City Park was the seventh most visited park in America—a much-loved destination for more than 11 million visitors each year, including its neighbors.
Katrina left 90 percent of the park covered in floodwaters and its infrastructure a shambles. But that deluge was succeeded by an outpouring of volunteer support. Beginning with the tennis players, who chopped falling limbs off of the shattered courts, more than 6,500 volunteers donated more than 34,000 hours to the park in the 18 months after the storm—and many of them have stayed. Take, for example, the Mow-Rons, volunteers who began cutting the park’s grass with their own lawnmowers in the weeks after Katrina. Today the group’s seven core members keep mowers at the park and cut the grass every Saturday morning.
This kind of volunteer service goes on at parks across the country every day. So why not give it a try? To find a Public Lands day event near you, go to www.publiclandsday.org. Like the Mow-Rons of City Park, you may find that experience to be both gratifying and habit-forming.
