Park Stewardship Project Paper

I volunteered with the “Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy” in the San Francisco Park Stewardship program. This organization was founded in 1970, where a group of activists formed a group called ‘People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area’, where they established national parks in San Francisco. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy has over 80,000 acres of park land, where they need volunteers to help work together to keep the parks clean and maintained. The Golden Gate National Parks has a volunteer program which helps conserve parkland dedicated to the community and environment. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy offer volunteer programs to many parks around the bay area, such as Presidio of San Francisco, Marin County …show more content…
Each volunteer was three hours long. First volunteer was done at Milagra Ridge on March 04, 2017, second volunteer was done at Rancho Corral de Tierra on March 11, 2017 and the third volunteer was done at Fort Funston on March 28, 2017. Each time I volunteered, the overall goal was similar at each park, but different in some ways. The goal of volunteering at Milagra Ridge was to assist and help with the major restoration project, where I helped removed non-native plants from the park to help and restore and protect the habitat at Milagra Ridge. At the second volunteer at Rancho Corral de Tierra, I helped in habitat restoration, where I was removing weeds and invasive vegetation on the walk paths, cleaning trails, collecting trash, loading and unloading tools and materials to perform all this work. At the third volunteer at Fort Funston, I helped with the landscaping project where we were planting native species of plants and removing invasive vegetation around the area. The goal of all these volunteer experience was to help keep the parks and the area maintained for any living species, such as different types of plants and animals. In addition, the goal is to keep all our parks cleaned and maintained, where the goal is to keep the parks in the ‘original’ condition, letting the native species live and grow there and removing the non-native species which are overtaking the parks. …show more content…
This volunteer experience was fit for me because I am active, where I can get my hands dirty and pull weeds and invasive species from the parks. This volunteer experience isn’t for anyone, but it is for the people who are willing to dedicate a bit of their time to put effort in removing and planting plants. One thing that I saw with other people volunteering was that they had a lot of gardening skills, which they were able to work efficiently by removing and planting different types of plants. I actually felt comfortable working with everyone who came out because it seemed that everyone was an environmentalist, where they wanted our parks to be a better place for everyone. One thing that could have been done differently was volunteer on a day that was not raining for a few days, because the parks get very muddy and messy, where I could have gotten sick by the weather as well. The organizers did a good job of bringing snacks, water, proper tools to get the job done. They knew what they were doing and some of them have been doing this for many