Tomorrow, Saturday September 28, is National Public Lands Day and a chance for you to roll up your sleeves and get dirty for the greater good. More than 2,000 projects across the country are pledged to participate, so you can bet you won’t have to look too hard to find a volunteer opportunity near you. This is the 20th anniversary of what has become the single largest volunteer effort for public lands. In the U.S., public lands account for more than 600 million acres, and last year, over 175,000 volunteers did the following:
- Collected an estimated 23,000 pounds of invasive plants
- Built and maintained an estimated 1,500 miles of trails
- Planted an estimated 100,000 trees, shrubs, and other native plants
- Removed an estimated 500 tons of trash from trails and other places
- Contributed an estimated $18 million through volunteer services to improve public lands across the country
It’s a celebration, it’s a good ol’ hearty work day, it’s great fun to do with your family or a group of friends, and it’s a great educational experience for young and not-as-young. We are all, whether we act this way responsibly or not, stewards of the land, and as the oft-repeated Native American proverb says:
“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
Use the event finder on the website to know where to show up tomorrow, work gloves in tow.
Change by Doing 