National Public Lands Day: Cleaning Up Our Nation’s Parks

Luckily, today’s rain held out for volunteers cleaning up Fort Pulaski National Monument this morning.  It was all part of National Public Lands Day .

Hundreds of thousands came out to help spruce up parks all across the country.

Today, 195 volunteers came out to the fort, including people from Coast Guard Station Tybee, school groups, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and many others.  They helped to landscape and pick up trash.

“The reason it is so important for the station to come out and help our neighbors at the park service is because they do so much for the community.  They offer so much and it’s a lot of land to take care of so we thought we’d come out and give them a hand,” says P.O. Chris Pittarelli with Coast Guard Station Tybee Island.

“The park service could not do what it does today without volunteer support.  We’re fortunate here at Ft. Pulaski to have local volunteers and also we have some RV volunteers that come from as far away as Alaska that come and provide volunteer hours,“ says Ronald Calhoun, volunteer coordinator for Fort Pulaski National Monument.

This is the 16th year of National Public Lands Day.  Last year, 120,000 volunteers worked in more than 1,800 locations and in every state.