Volunteer Stewardship

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  • We are always looking for dedicated volunteers to help us restore and maintain fragile, native ecosystems in more than twenty state parks across southern Michigan. Stewardship volunteers are asked to complete a volunteer registration form in order to ensure the best possible volunteer experience. Volunteer stewardship workdays can be found on the volunteer calendar. More information about the workday, including contact information and directions is available on each event.

  • Volunteer Registration Form PDF icon
  • Volunteer Calendar

Email Updates

  • Sign up for email updates! You can sign up for the parks you are interested in volunteering at, and you will be notified about upcoming volunteer steward events.

General Workday Information

  • Help improve habitat for species of greatest conservation need

    Michigan state parks provide unique habitat and are home to several species of greatest need. The volunteer steward program engages volunteers, students, scouts and park users in helping to protect these special places to directly improve habitat for these species. No experience is necessary to join in! 

    Workday cancellation

    If a workday must be canceled due to inclement weather or for any other reason, a voice mail message saying so will be posted at 517-719-2285 for southeast or at 517-202-1360 for southwest Michigan at least two hours before the scheduled workday start time. If there is no cancelation message the workday will continue as planned.

    Youth volunteers and groups

    The volunteer steward program welcomes working with youth, students and scouts. All minors (under 18) must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. The accompanying parent/guardian must sign a volunteer release and waiver of liability form for the minor. If participating with an organized group (i.e. scouts, school groups), the group leader may sign instead. Workday activities often can accommodate groups, but advanced registration is strongly encouraged for groups larger than five. This helps us plan for equipment and ensures that all participants are suited to the day's task. All youth groups must have an age-appropriate adequate ratio of adult to youth participants. Volunteer steward workday leaders reserve the right to deny participation to unaccompanied minors or anyone due to misconduct or unsafe behavior. Please feel free to contact your regional natural resource steward if you have any questions.

    The volunteer steward program is primarily focused on hands-on restoration with education as a secondary goal. We welcome service learning opportunities, but the emphasis and the majority of time will be spent on hands-on projects in the field. Classrooms and student groups interested in an interpretive experience should contact the park visitor center or explorer guide.

    Park map and directions

    Each event listing on the volunteer calendar has GPS coordinates linked to a google map of the exact meeting location. We often do not meet at the park headquarters or other areas with a street address.

    What to wear and bring

    Please wear appropriate clothing for outdoor work, including long pants and work boots. Please also bring drinking water, work gloves and eye protection (especially prescription safety glasses). Waterproof boots, either knee-high rubber boots or hip waders, are recommended for fen and other wetland sites. Event listings will specify this recommendation. If you don't have waterproof boots and would like to borrow a pair, please note that when you register and we will try to provide them.

    What not to bring

    Be sure your outerwear, gloves, and boots are free of mud and hitchhiking seeds before coming to the workday. We don't want to inadvertently spread invasive plant seeds into these high quality natural areas.

Individual Activities

Some training and coordination is required before you can volunteer on your own. Once you are trained, these activities can be preformed whenever it is convenient for you!

  • If you are interested in these opportunities, please email Heidi Frei or call 517-284-6133.

  • Insect Monitoring (July - October)

    Help us determine whether we have rare insects in some of our highest quality ecosystems. No prior insect identification experience is necessary. All information and equipment will be provided. 

  • Bird Surveys (spring and summer) PDF icon

    Are you an avid birder? Do you know how to identify grassland birds or rare bird species? If so, we need your help to gather baseline bird data or monitor known populations of rare birds in select areas of certain parks.

  • Forest Health Watch (spring and summer)

    Help keep a watchful eye on our wonderful forest resources! Learn to identify the early stages of forest diseases and pests like oak wilt, beech bark disease and Asian long-horned beetle so that we can detect and treat cases early on. Plus, you'll get to help while enjoying a hike outdoors at several sites in our picturesque Michigan state parks and recreation areas!

  • Galerucella Beetle Redistribution (late May - mid June) PDF icon

    Want to help us combat purple loosestrife? We'd love to have you collect Galerucella beetles, purple loosestrife's natural enemy, and redistribute them to wetlands within the state parks and recreation areas we are focusing on.

  • Native Planting (mid-May to mid-June and September) PDF icon

    From the middle of May to the middle of June, and possibly in September, we will be planting native plants at a handful of parks. Some of this will be done at workdays, but we could really use your help beyond the 3-hour workday and during the week!

  • Invasive Plant Mapping PDF icon

    Do you like to take walks outside? Do you know how to identify invasive plant species? Would you like to learn? If you answered yes, we'd love your help mapping patches of invasive plants. This data will be incredibly helpful as we plan where to focus our restoration efforts. Map reading skills will be helpful, but no experience is necessary.

  • Invasive Plant Removal (spring and summer) PDF icon

    Help pull herbaceous weeds like garlic mustard, sweet clover and others when it fits into your schedule. These non-native plants out compete native plants and can reduce complex ecosystems to very simple ones with low biological diversity. Pulling these plants is not too strenuous, almost like weeding a garden.

  • Native Prairie Seed Collection

    We are in need of volunteers to hand collect native prairie seed at several state parks and recreation areas throughout the month of October and in early November.

    Volunteers are asked to register using the volunteer registration form or via email to malvitzl@michigan.gov.