Sightings
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Volunteer workers place protective fencing for prairie restoration and preservation at The Conservancy's Zumwalt Prairie Preserve in Oregon.
© Rick McEwan
Volunteer
• Volunteer opportunities at The Nature Conservancy
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A Force for Nature
Conservancy Volunteers: Priceless
By Jennifer Uscher
This October, at The Nature Conservancy’s Zumwalt Prairie Preserve in Oregon, a dozen volunteers from around the region are expected to show up for a weekend work party. They’ll fix fences and plant native shrubs along a creek to restore spawning habitat for steelhead, all in the shadow of the Wallowa Mountains. After the work they’ll enjoy a barbecue dinner, a campfire and an overnight stay. It’s one of many volunteer workdays hosted year-round across the country.
“Stuffing envelopes is out the window,” says Scott Boven, volunteer manager for the Virginia chapter. “We’ve got great opportunities for people to be creative and help conservation, such as leading field trips, taking photographs at preserves or collecting eelgrass seeds that will be transplanted for restoration work in the Chesapeake Bay.” There’s
a project to fit any schedule or interest, from burn-crew training to “virtual volunteer” jobs such as newsletter editing. The Conservancy also recruits volunteers to assist with wildlife research: banding birds at Arizona’s Hassayampa River Preserve, for example, or sampling stream bottoms for insects in Connecticut’s Saugatuck River watershed. Some preserves provide lodging for volunteers helping with research or other longer-term tasks.
Conservancy volunteers donate hundreds of thousands of hours annually, recently estimated to be worth more than $2.5 million.
