engaging volunteers directly, working with more than 1,500 individual volun- teers annually. Their Kansas City WildLands program works to involve the people of the region as much as pos- sible in the stewardship of “prairie, glade, savanna, and natural forest com- munities that exist on public lands in the metro area.” This program is allowing the citi- zens of Kansas City to directly take charge of their outdoor spaces, which previously have been neglected. As the  addition to a lack of management, these  lack of recognition and appreciation by the urban public.”


Once someone has volunteered for a space they generally feel more owner-


ship over it, so programs such as this are self-building. The more people get involved, the more they want to stay involved and get others involved as well.


Over the last two years the Kansas


City WildLands program hosted 68 vol- unteer workdays, with 2,697 volunteer - ers collected for their native seed bank, and over 250 invasive cedar trees removed from public lands. Currently WildLands volunteers are helping to restore 13 remnant sites within the Kansas City metropolitan region.


Volunteers across America


These are only a few of the innova- tive volunteer programs going on across


the country to get people more involved in the stewardship of trails and green- ways. There are many other programs, such as Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, Volunteer Vacations through American Hiking Society, National Trails Day, and Back Country Horseman’s volunteer program which logged over 324,000 volunteer hours in 2017.   and recognition for the ways they are connecting people with the outdoors through volunteering. As we move into the future, the popularity of outdoor recreation will continue to grow. It will be even more important to have a solid foundation of volunteers caring for our public lands, and leaders who nurture these outstanding programs.


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