BLM Colorado Celebrates Volunteer Month

Volunteers are vital to BLM Colorado. Every year, thousands of volunteers donate their time, skills, and services to help us manage public land. For National Volunteer Week we are highlighting some of the important projects completed by volunteers in 2020.

April 23, 2021

"Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere."

Colorado Canyons Association volunteers cleaned up a stretch of I-70 that bisects the BLM McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area for a 2020 National Public Lands Day event. The CCA coordinates volunteer activities in the National Conservation Areas in the BLM Grand Junction Field Office and adopted the stretch of highway that runs through McInnis Canyons NCA

April 22, 2021

What does 9 + 6 + 1 + 2 = ?

In this case, 72.

9 volunteers + 6 Rocky Mountain Conservancy Conservation Corps members + 1Headwaters Trails Alliance+ 2 BLM staff completed 72 hours of volunteer work to improve trails in the Strawberry Special Recreation Management Area as part of Grand County's Interagency National Public Lands Day in 2020. The BLM partnered with the Headwaters Trails Alliance and Grand Mountain Bike Alliance on the project which included construction of two bridges in two locations across a deep drainage.

April 21, 2021

Volunteers contributed more than 400 hours of work to help construct the Dudbobs Trail, a 6+ mile singletrack trail. The BLM worked with the Central Colorado Mountain Riders and the U.S. Forest Service to build the trail in 2020, a welcome addition to the Fourmile trail system south of Buena Vista

Volunteer dead headers? Yes, you read that right.

In 2020, eight dedicated Master Gardener volunteers maintained the gardens at Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center & Museum, weeding, pruning, thinning, educating, tutoring, dead heading, and more! (Dead heading is a term for removing flower heads as they fade.) The volunteer gardeners kept the CANM gardens beautiful and maintained, contributing more than 280 hours at a value of about $7,150!

April 20, 2021

A pandemic didn't stop our dedicated volunteers.

In 2020, the BLM partnered with the San Juan Mountains Association for a National Public Lands Day event, adapted for COVID-19. The BLM identified areas in the Tres Rios Field Office that volunteer groups could sign up for and adopt as their cleanup site. Groups were matched with locations and took before and after photos of their cleanup sites.

Fort Lewis College students helped clean up abandoned transient camps along a Durango trail system and cleaned up about 13 cubic yards of trash a total of more than 2,000 pounds!

Thanks to our partners and volunteers for making this a well-organized, safe event.

April 19. 2021

Last year, the Sand Wash Basin Wild Horse Advocate Team - SWAT conducted a cleanup day in the Sand Wash Herd Management Area. A group of hard-working volunteers spent a day in the basin removing old fence posts and barbed wire - dangerous hazards to wild horses and wildlife.