All national parks will waive their entrance fees this Saturday, September 29, for National Public Lands Day, the largest one-day volunteer effort for public lands in America.
According to the National Environmental Education Foundation, the nonprofit organization that promotes this annual day of “Helping Hands for America’s Lands,” a whopping 170,000 volunteers are expected to spend time removing invasive species, planting trees, picking up litter, maintaining trails, and performing countless other tasks this weekend that will help restore and beautify our public places.
NPCA is proud to be supporting five different events for National Public Lands Day. Please consider joining us! Just click the links below for descriptions and RSVP information:
- Repair park trails, clean up campgrounds and picnic areas, and plant native vegetation at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state.
- Take down barbed-wire fencing that can harm pronghorn antelope at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming (generously sponsored by Nature Valley).
- Remove invasive buffelgrass that threatens native plants near Saguaro National Park in Arizona.
- Remove cut lotus flowers from the ponds and perform other maintenance tasks at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC.
- Restore trails and playgrounds, chop and stack wood, and maintain common areas at Greenbelt Park in Maryland.
Can’t make it to any of these events? Choose from hundreds of other volunteer opportunities around the country on the National Public Lands Day website.
As an added incentive, volunteers who participate in National Public Lands Day at a National Park Service site (as well as a number of other public sites) are eligible to receive a coupon to enter for free on another day of their choice within the next year. So, you not only get to enjoy the park and help out without paying any entrance fees, you also get to go back for another full day for free on any public lands site!
Learn More
Watch a video of NPCA’s Legislative Representative Alan Spears on the importance of cleaning up Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and some of the interesting objects volunteers have pulled out of the park’s beautiful ponds!
About the author
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Jennifer Errick Associate Director of Digital StorytellingJennifer co-produces NPCA's podcast, The Secret Lives of Parks, and writes and edits a wide variety of online content. She has won multiple awards for her audio storytelling.
