Setting 800 catch-and-release kangaroo rat traps with biologists. Searching for speckled dace in a mountain creek. Pulling teeth from bear carcasses for testing. Patrolling lakes to educate fishermen. Flying over the ocean to help spot possible poachers. If any of that sounds like an interesting way to spend a day, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife wants you to help out.
The department launched the Natural Resources Volunteer Program in San Diego in 2002 and now has nine chapters across the state, Lt. Ken Smirl said. An Inland Empire chapter, based out of Ontario and established in 2011, has about a dozen volunteers and is eager to recruit more, Smirl said.
Though volunteers don’t do enforcement, they provide valuable support to the department’s wardens and biologists, said Bill DeLuna, who joined the volunteer program after retiring from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in 2011.
“They just don’t have the manpower or the resources to be able to reach out to everybody,” DeLuna said. “We fill that gap.”
Setting 800 catch-and-release kangaroo rat traps with biologists. Searching for speckled dace in a mountain creek. Pulling teeth from bear carcasses for testing. Patrolling lakes to educate fishermen. Flying over the ocean to help spot possible poachers.
If any of that sounds like an interesting way to spend a day, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife wants you to help out.
The department launched the Natural Resources Volunteer Program in San Diego in 2002 and now has nine chapters across the state, Lt. Ken Smirl said. An Inland Empire chapter, based out of Ontario and established in 2011, has about a dozen volunteers and is eager to recruit more, Smirl said.
Though volunteers don’t do enforcement, they provide valuable support to the department’s wardens and biologists, said Bill DeLuna, who joined the volunteer program after retiring from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in 2011.
“They just don’t have the manpower or the resources to be able to reach out to everybody,” DeLuna said. “We fill that gap.” CONTINUE READING….
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