News Release

For Release:   Sept. 9, 2008       CA-CC-08-91
Contact:  David Christy (916) 985-4474

Local Volunteers Sought to Pitch In at Carrizo Plain National Monument on National Public Lands Day, Saturday, Sept. 27

Part of Nationwide Effort to Improve National Lands in Honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps

Volunteers at the Bureau of Land Management’s Carrizo Plain National Monument will plant trees, install irrigation and perform other general tasks as area residents join the largest annual coast-to-coast, single-day volunteer restoration effort for America’s public lands on Sept. 27.

"This is the Carrizo Plain National Monuments third annual National Public Lands Day and we have grown every year.  We are looking forward to having many volunteers from the surrounding communities to help us make our local public lands that much better.  We will have lunch provided with informational talks provided by experts on the native plants and animals in the area.  There will also be door prizes donated by local businesses and each person will receive a nice gift basket with assorted goodies," said Ryan Cooper, BLM recreation planner and event coordinator.

The festivities will start at 9 a.m. at the Selby Campground.  For more information, contact Cooper at (661) 369-2836.

Sponsored for the ninth consecutive year by Toyota Motor Sales, USA, these national cleanups give Americans an annual chance to make public lands in local communities safer, prettier, and more desirable.

"Last year we reached a monumental participation of 110,000 volunteers in National Public Lands Day, and we are expecting to increase this by an additional 10,000 this year," said Robb Hampton, director of National Public Lands Day.

This year, National Public Lands Day will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps. By educating volunteers at sites across the country, NPLD maintains the legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, an army of 3 million Americans who in the 1930’s countered the devastation of the Dust Bowl and the American chestnut blight by planting more than 3 billion trees, building 800 state parks, and fighting forest fires.

On Arbor Day, the National Environmental Education Foundation along with the Student Conservation Association (SCA) launched a nationwide effort to plant one million trees prior to National Public Lands Day in an attempt to honor the efforts of the CCC.

For the fifth year in a row, volunteers who work at a site managed by any of five federal agencies will be rewarded with a pass good for free entry any day during the next year at public land sites managed by those agencies: National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

For more information on NPLD, or to see a list of NPLD sites, activities, contacts, and downloadable photos from past events, go to the Media Center section of www.publiclandsday.org.

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