Every year tens of thousands of Americans give something back to their nation while volunteering their time and talents to help the National Wildlife Refuge System fulfill its main objective: conserving wildlife. The numbers tell the story: according to the most recent annual report on volunteers 37,960 volunteers donated 1,392,062 hours to wildlife during fiscal year 2009. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the refuge system, calculates the value of the volunteer service at $28,189,255 – or 669 full time staff positions.
Considering that the Refuge System is bracing for severe 2012 budget cuts, it is impossible to miss the value represented in each donated volunteer hour. In the June issue of The Flyer, the newsletter of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, NWRA Vice President Desiree Sorenson-Groves estimates, "Cuts to the Refuge System could range from $25 million up to $100 million."
Those who volunteer at refuges not only give back to with their country, they also report that they have formed a personal bond with their American heritage. They experience up close the magnificence of this land, and the creatures it supports.
Giving Back: So Many Ways to Volunteer
Volunteer activities range from the everyday - leading tours or pulling weeds - to exotic activities like surveying and trapping pythons in the Everglades. At Hopper Mountain NWR in California volunteers monitor condor nests. At Bon Secour NWR in Alabama they monitor sea turtle nests. It was volunteers that turned the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR in New Jersey into a get-outdoors destination for families with children during the 2009 National TV-Turnoff Week.
For many, the volunteer jobs involve a learning component. They may learn how to band a duck, or become experts at locating and mapping invasive plants. A personal volunteer account, posted at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Volunteers page, tells the story of Tony, a retiree who received a technological education while volunteering at the White River NWR in Arkansas. It wasn't just that "Tony learned how to operate a GPS unit to record locations of assets in this 160,000-acre paradise." He also learned to input the data he gathered through GPS into a computer, create a PDF file, and create hyperlinks to photos of the assets.
Another area where refuge volunteers naturally meet with the need for education is over the issue of invasive plants. Now considered one of the top threats to the future of the National Wildlife Refuge System, the problem of invasive, non-native plants is being countered regularly through the dedication of wildlife refuge volunteers.
In online learning modules, and other training, volunteers are taught how to identify and map and monitor the progress of invasives. They also become involved in removing invasives, restoring native habitat, and educating the rest of us about the problem.
Wildlife Refuges are Everywhere
Unlike the American National Parks, which are relatively few in number and concentrated in the West, National Wildlife Refuges, are everywhere. There are over 500 of them, and according to a National Wildlife Refuge Service fact sheet, there is a refuge within an hour’s drive of most major cities in the U.S.
Every state has at least one National Wildlife Refuge, but many U.S. states host between 7 and 10 refuges. California has the most with 40, and Florida, with 28, the second most. Connecticut and Kentucky are the only states that have just a single refuge.
A great visual aid to understanding the extent to which refuges are scattered across the landscape is this map at the National Wildlife Refuge Association (The NWRA is an advocacy group for the refuge system, and distinct from the NRWS itself, which has its own data-rich set of webpages.)
Teddy Roosevelt Created the First National Wildlife Refuge
The NWRS has been 100 years in the making, according to a Short History of the Refuge System, published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The first - Pelican Island, near Vero Beach, FL - was created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Its mission was to protect egrets and herons, which were being killed by the thousands for the demands of the fashion industry.
The Short History of the Refuge System asserts that as early as the mid 1800s, the diaries and journalistic accounts of western explorers were sounding alarms about the unrestricted killing of wildlife. By 1900, "the nation had witnessed the near extinction of the bison," and other once-abundant forms of wildlife, and public support was growing for government action to reverse this.
Throughout the 20th century, many national wildlife refuges were created specifically to protect habitat and breeding areas, and migration routes for birds; a few were created to conserve the natural habitat of the rarest wild species – the bison, bald eagles, and whooping cranes. Since the signing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, an additional 59 wildlife refuges have been established specifically to protect the most challenged of species, like sea turtles, manatees, and peregrine falcons. Nearly 300 of the 1,311 species on the U.S. Endangered Species List, are within the Refuge System.
Finding a Refuge, Getting Outdoors
A common way volunteers find their niche in the Refuge System, is to look up the refuge located closest, then visit it. Click on the map link above, then click the Refuge Locator button, and the state in which you want to volunteer. Or click on the Friends Group Locator on the map - there are more than 200 refuges that have Friends Groups, another logical portal to a volunteer assignment.
Perhaps, you would like to volunteer in a particular program? The following links may be just the place to get you started. The NWRS maintains this list of refuges established just for endangered species. Or, click on the map at the bottom of this page on Invasives and Volunteers which is maintained by the NWRA; the map will connect you, state-by-state, to refuges that are fighting Invasives with intensive help from volunteers.
Finally, if you have some time to stay - usually, at least one month - this page on Resident Volunteers, maintained by the Fish and Wildlife Service, is for you.
Kathlin F. Sickel - Reading and writing in print and online. So much to uncover and report. Join me; let's see what we can discover.
