Lend the land a hand with Wilderness Volunteers

Does the idea of loafing around a pool for a week make you want to jump off something? Are you the type that hates sitting around the house with nothing to do? If you’re a busy bee by nature, and a philanthropist at heart, sign up for a Wilderness Volunteer trip. If you don’t mind a working vacation, these trips can also prove a really good deal, money-wise, for a week in the great outdoors.

Nonprofit organization Wilderness Volunteers, around since 1997, organizes volunteers to work in U.S. public lands, like national parks, U.S. Forest Service areas and Bureau of Land Management land. Participants on projects work several hours daily on tasks that might include trail maintenance, planting native plants, removing nonnative plants or painting buildings and building fences.

Trips cost $259 per person, which includes food and commissary equipment. (Some of the trips involve backpacking; others are solely car camping.) You must provide your own transportation to the trail head and your own backpacking and camping gear.

Upcoming trips to consider, some with limited spaces remaining, include projects in Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, Hawaii, March 20-25, 2009; Buffalo National River in Arkansas, March 22 to 28; the Oregon North Coast, April 5 to 12; and Canyonlands National Park in Utah, April 26 to May 2.

For inspiration, read this post by Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Susan Spano, “Glen Canyon ranger cleans up Escalante River, one invasive plant at a time.”

Contact: Wilderness Volunteers, (928) 556-0038

– Susan Derby, Special to The Times

[Photo: Volunteers in Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, 2007; WildernessVolunteers.org]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 3:36 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Eco-Travel, Hawaii, Hawaii's Big Island, National Parks, Oregon, Southern States, Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.