Oakland, Charter Township (Oakland, MI)
Oakland, Charter Township (Oakland, MI)
Help keep our parks and natural areas beautiful, give back to the community, get to know some great people, and have lots of fun! We rely on your support and would love to help you get involved in your community. We have opportunities for people of all ages and skill levels.
If you’d like to volunteer with a group of 5 or more from your company, school, organization, or club, please contact us in advance so that we can plan ahead. We’ll work with you to determine if one of our scheduled events is a good fit, or we can plan a custom volunteering event for your group.
Check our natural areas website or the latest newsletter to see the calendar of upcoming volunteer workdays. We host workdays for garlic mustard pulling, invasive
shrub control, and seed collecting. Drop-ins are welcome, but please contact us in advance if you’ll be bringing more than 5 people. RSVP to receive information about last-minute changes or cancellations.
If you’d like to volunteer, but the scheduled days don’t work for you, consider getting involved in one of the volunteer programs listed below!
Please complete the volunteer waiver and bring it with you to the workday.
Stewardship Specialist, Grant Vander Laan
Recreation Manager, Jason Spiller
Help make each season special for the community by volunteering at our Music in the Meadows summer concerts and festivals in fall and winter. Contact the Recreation staff to learn how you can get involved.
Do you love nature? Would you like to play an important role in caring for the natural areas in a park near you? Park Stewards will be trained to help implement natural areas management plans for our parks. This could include invasive species control, photo monitoring, seed collection/dispersal, and other natural areas management activities according to the interest of each volunteer.
We maintain three native flower beds at Gallagher Creek Park, Bear Creek Nature Park, and Marsh View Park. These beds are beautiful, provide an easy place to collect native seed, and help people learn about the importance of native plants. Volunteers will be responsible for the upkeep and design of beds.
We use locally-collected seed from native grasses and wildflowers for prairie and woodland restoration projects. You can work individually or participate in planned seed collection events. Everyone is welcome! We will train you to identify the species and provide collection supplies.
Become a citizen scientist and make a difference!
Learn how to safely and properly monitor bird nests, both in nest boxes and other nest types. By monitoring a nearby nest, you can help scientists study the biology of North America’s birds and how it might be changing over time. We participate in the citizen science NestWatch program.
We monitor the water quality of lakes in our parks to know if they continue to be ready for fun and recreation, or if they’re starting to degrade over time. The MiCorps’ Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program (CLMP) that we participate in has been an important component of Michigan’s inland lakes monitoring program for 50 years. The primary purpose of this cooperative program is to help citizen volunteers monitor indicators of water quality in their lake and document changes in lake quality over time.
If you are interested in joining our volunteer prescribed fire crew, or would like to learn more about using prescribed fire as a land management tool, join us for the training workshop held annually in February. We will cover reasons for using prescribed fire, preparations for conducting a fire, necessary tools, roles of each burn crew member, and ignition patterns.