BLM Celebrates National Public Lands Day at 14 sites in California

To celebrate National Public Lands Day (NPLD), hundreds of volunteers will work to improve the quality of their public lands at 14 selected Bureau of Land Management sites in California. Volunteers will perform trail and campground maintenance, clean-up illegal dump sites, remove invasive plants and restore areas back to their natural state.

“National Public Lands Day has grown significantly,” said BLM Acting State Director Jim Abbott. “What began a decade ago with one or two sites has grown into a major volunteer effort at over a dozen locations.”

Some of the activities include renovating the Soda Lake overlook and boardwalk at the Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County; planting native seeds at Fort Ord in Monterey County; hiking to a remote location in the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument in Riverside County to remove invasive plants; conducting an interactive “Caring for the Land” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Fair; and taking intercity youth for an overnight excursion to El Mirage Dry Lake Bed in San Bernardino County to clean-up trash and campout overnight.

The official National Public Lands Day is September 26, when most of the volunteer events will take place, but some sites are holding their events on different dates. The first National Public Lands Day event in California is August 28 & 29, at the newly designated Bitner Area of Critical Environmental Concern in Modoc County. The last event will take place in partnership with the National Park Service at its Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County on November 7. For a complete list of dates, sites and how to volunteer, visit the BLM volunteer website at http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/res/volunteers.html.

National Public Lands Day is the largest volunteer hands-on activity o fits kind in the nation. Held the last Saturday in September each year, National Public Lands Day brings together thousands of individuals and organizations to refurbish and restore the country’s public lands.