Spring is the Perfect Time for Nature Volunteering

Written By Mark

Springtime is here in Utah! Flowers are blooming, parks are full of people, neighbors are chatting across fences, summer travel plans are being made, and political, societal, and environmental chaos have infiltrated every aspect of our lives and threaten to overwhelm us on a daily basis. It truly is the best time of year! It’s also a time to consider how we reconcile these wildly divergent parts of our lives as Utahns: our love of being outdoors and our concern for the world around us. For that I propose: nature volunteering!

Nature volunteering offers an incredible benefits for all parties involved: nature, our communities, and ourselves. It also gives us a chance to get outside, be around like-minded people, and feel like we are chipping in to help solve at least one little part of one of the world’s problems.

Nature volunteering consists of any activity where you are supporting a healthier environment. The simplest and most common type of nature volunteering involves doing physical work at a particular outdoors site. Picking up trash, pulling invasive plants, maintaining trails, and planting trees are common activities. Most volunteer events go for about 2-3 hours and offer a range of jobs depending on your skills and abilities. They are almost always family-friendly! The tasks are straightforward; anyone can help and any amount of help is appreciated.

Opportunities for nature volunteering abound here in the Salt Lake area. The parks departments of most cities host regular sessions throughout the summer. I have volunteered many times with Salt Lake City’s Trails and Natural Lands department, resulting in some wonderful evenings cleaning up the Jordan River, Popperton Park, City Creek, and other beautiful places in our city. Environment-focused non-profits are also always looking for more volunteers. The Jordan River Commission, Cottonwood Canyons Foundation, Save Our Canyons, Grow the Flow, and others do similar work in different places, all of which contribute to our high quality of life here in Utah.

There are also unique options for folks who enjoy talking to people or teaching kids. Organizations frequently need help hosting informational tables at festivals and events, and many non-profits, like the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation and Wasatch Mountain Institute run educational programs at visitor centers, field trips, and summer camps where volunteers can teach and share their excitement about nature. No matter where you live, what you’re interested in, or what your skills and abilities are, there is a group and a task out there for you to contribute to!

One of my best and most unique days of volunteering was a canoe cleanup of the Jordan River with the Jordan River Commission and Salt Lake City’s Public Lands. We met at the International Peace Gardens and got a quick primer on canoe and cleanup safety. We then paddled our canoes down the river, picking up trash along the way. It felt like we were behind-the-scenes of the city, observing the river, the trail, and our neighbors from a whole new angle. We got to learn new skills (try picking up a milk jug using a trash grabber while your canoe partner runs you into an overhanging willow tree). We got a little dirty and wet and picked up so much trash we nearly sank our canoe! It was thrilling to spend a day on the water, learning about the beauty and fragility of our local river, and feeling energized by the other volunteers and their love and dedication to our local nature. Now, whenever I bike along the Jordan River trail I am reminded of that productive and inspiring day.

The benefits of nature volunteering for nature itself are obvious: this is what you showed up for! You can help make cleaner parks, healthier rivers, and improved habitat for plants and wildlife. Now more than ever, our public lands need our help. Staffing and funding have been cut at many federal agencies and has trickled down to local offices, state agencies, and non-profits. There are also benefits for our communities: working to make our public places better makes us feel like part of our community, working alongside like-minded people shows us that we share values with our neighbors, and we share the load of public service by contributing to our public service organizations like city parks departments and environmental non-profits.

But now we get to the most important benefit: the benefits to ourselves. This may seem counterintuitive, as volunteering is supposed to be all about giving freely of yourself to a worthy cause. But research shows that the greatest beneficiary of volunteering is in fact the volunteer yourself! We get to spend a day outside, with all the physical and mental health benefits that come with that. We get to socialize with like-minded people, making us feel like we are part of a community while having fun with others. We learn new skills, like how to use tools, and learn about nature, like the difference between native and invasive plants. If we are feeling anxious, depressed, or hopeless about problems either personal or global, then taking action can help improve our mood and outlook. And finally, we get the satisfaction of knowing that we contributed, in at least some small way, to our community and our planet. In this day and age, when so many problems seem so huge and out of our control, having a place where we can make a positive and real impact, right away, in just one afternoon, in our own community where we live, work, and play, is an incredibly powerful and empowering feeling.

I am a living example of how beneficial volunteering can be to you, the volunteer. In Spring 2021 I had recently moved to Utah and wanted to spend more time in our great outdoors while contributing to my new community. I joined some volunteer days with Salt Lake City’s Trails and Natural Lands and the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation. I pulled plenty of nasty weeds like Myrtle Spurge and Puncturevine, and felt a sense of pride and accomplishment after each day. I soon discovered a more involved opportunity with the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation: their volunteer Naturalist program at the Silver Lake Visitor Center. For one morning a week during that summer, I got to act like a Ranger at the Visitor Center. We set up an information table at the trailhead and loaded it with animal pelts, skulls, pictures of bugs and plants, trail maps, and anything else we found interesting. We taught kids about animals, adults about history, and everyone about hiking and safety. It was a lot of work keeping up with the kids’ questions, but it was so rewarding to learn about the environment I live in and share my excitement with others. During that summer I got to know some of the actual Park Rangers that work at Silver Lake and the rest of the Wasatch Mountains. Through my connections with them and my new skills from volunteering, by the next summer I had been hired as a real-life Ranger with the Forest Service! Talk about being a major benefit from volunteering! To this day I still treat my job as a volunteer project; I try to make a healthier environment, connect with other people, and learn and enjoy my time in nature along the way. I believe that you, too, through nature volunteering, can improve yourself and the world around you.

Spring is a time of renewal. Nature is thriving and looking beautiful. The biggest tree in the forest and the tiniest flower in a crack in the sidewalk are both working hard to be their best selves and contribute to their ecosystem. We too may have big problems, for ourselves or our society, but our solutions can start small. Merely picking up one piece of trash or planting one tree is a step in the right direction. Every little thing you do helps. Nature needs us, and we need nature. Celebrate the spirit of the season by volunteering for nature this Spring!

Local nature volunteering organizations:

Mark