News Release

For Release: Sept. 10, 2008       
Contact: David Christy (916) 985-4474
CA-CC-08-92

Fort Ord Hosts Volunteer Work Projects on National Public Lands Day, Saturday, Sept. 27

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

Volunteers at the Bureau of Land Management's Fort Ord public lands will remove invasive plants, collect native plant seeds and acorns and perform trail work as area residents join the largest annual coast-to-coast, single-day volunteer restoration effort for America's public lands on Sept. 27.

"This free event is family-friendly and is co-sponsored by the BLM, the Base Realignment and Closure Fort Ord Field Office and Monterey County’s Toro Regional Park," said Eric Morgan, BLM's Fort Ord manager.

The festivities will start at 9 a.m. at the Creekside Terrace trailhead. Following the volunteer work projects that last for three hours, lunch will be served at Toro Park. There will be food, entertainment and music from noon to 3 p.m.  For further information on National Public Lands Day, visit: http://www.publiclandsday.org/ or call the BLM Fort Ord office at (831) 394-8314.

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. Volunteers also will get a NPLD poster and tee-shirt.

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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