Volunteers Cleaning up Baker and Malheur Counties for National Public Lands Day
By Garrett Christensen on Tuesday, September 20th, 2022 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
HUNTINGTON, OR – (Release from the Bureau of Land Management) Volunteers who love their public lands are invited to celebrate National Public Lands Day, Saturday, Sept. 24, with a cleanup day on the Lower Owyhee in Malheur County or at Spring Recreation Site in Huntington, Ore.
Friends of the Owyhee will host the cleanup of the Lower Owyhee Canyon below the dam. Interested volunteers should meet at the Watchable Wildlife Area at 8 a.m. MT. To get there from Nyssa, Ore.: Travel south on OR-201 8 miles (follow signs for Lake Owyhee); turn right onto Owyhee Avenue and travel 4 miles; then turn left onto Owyhee Lake Road. Travel 5 miles and the WWA will be on the left.
Boy Scout Troop 522 of Keating, Baker Field Office and the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center will host the cleanup at Spring Recreation Site on the Snake River. If there are enough volunteers, a group may be dispatched to work at Birch Creek Wayside, a quarter-mile segment of the original Oregon Trail.
Interested volunteers should meet at Spring Recreation Site at 9 a.m. PT. To get there from Interstate 84: Take Exit 345 to Huntington, Ore. Keep left onto Washington St. East, which will become Snake River Road. The Spring Recreation Site is located at 28403 Snake River Rd, Huntington, OR 97907.
Both cleanups are expected to take 3 to 4 hours and will include trash pickup, weed removal and other similar work. Volunteers should wear appropriate clothing for conditions and closed toe shoes. Hats and sunscreen are recommended. Participants will receive a National Public Lands Day T-shirt and a one-day public lands pass.
For more information about the Owyhee cleanup, visit https://www.friendsoftheowyhee.org/events. For more information about the Spring Recreation cleanup, call Sandy Tennyson at 541-523-1843.
National Public Lands Day is the largest single-day volunteer public lands improvement event in the nation. Events involve hundreds of thousands of volunteers nationwide who help clean up and restore public lands and recreation sites.
