Volunteers and District staff are pulling together to help keep public lands clean from the uplands to the coastline.
They were scheduled to take part in the 17th annual National Public Lands Day and the 25th annual International Coastal Cleanup Day. Both days were recognized on Sept. 25 this year, and volunteers across the country and around the world worked to clean up public lands and coastal waterways.
The District owns and manages approximately 436,000 acres of environmentally sensitive lands for water resource and natural systems protection. About 2.5 million people visit District lands each year to enjoy a variety of recreational opportunities such as bird watching, biking, boating, canoeing, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting and picnicking.
This year the Land Resources Department invited volunteers to celebrate National Public Lands Day at the District’s Potts Preserve in Citrus County by trimming back branches on the trails and picking up trash that visitors packed in but didn’t pack out.
To mark Coastal Cleanup Day this year, District Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) volunteers, Keep Manatee Beautiful and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection joined forces at Terra Ceia Preserve State Park to pick up debris that had washed ashore or been left behind.
For more information about volunteer opportunities with the District’s Land Resources Department, please call 1-800-423-1476, ext. 4470. For more information about volunteer opportunities with the District’s SWIM Program, please contact Brandt Henningsen at (813) 985-7481, ext. 2202.