Wildlife Volunteers Needed

April 20, 2008 02:11 pm

— DURHAM – Are you interested in helping protect New Hampshire’s wildlife? Are you an enthusiastic person, involved in your community? Do you manage your own land to help wildlife? Are you concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat in New Hampshire? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, we need you! The New Hampshire Coverts Project is looking for applicants for the Fall 2008 Coverts Training Workshop.
The fourteenth annual New Hampshire Coverts Project Workshop will be held September 3-6, 2008 at Sargent Center in Hancock. Trainees are needed to learn about wildlife habitat, land stewardship, and habitat conservation. Anyone with an interest in wildlife, land management, and community outreach is invited to complete an application.
The name of the project, “Coverts” (pronounced ‘cover’ with a ‘t’), derives from the name for a thicket that provides shelter for wildlife. The term symbolizes the project’s goal of enhancing, restoring, and conserving habitat for the rich diversity of native wildlife in New Hampshire. Trained volunteers for the Coverts Project help educate the public on how sound forest management practices can enhance wildlife habitat.
Each fall for the past thirteen years, 25 selected Coverts Cooperators have joined a team of natural resource professional in a rustic setting in New Hampshire. Room and board is provided for free, along with a variety of reference materials. For three and a half days, participants learn about the latest concepts and issues in wildlife and forest ecology, habitat management, land conservation, community conservation planning and effective outreach. In return, Coverts volunteers agree to return to their communities, share what they’ve learned, and motivate others to become stewards of the state’s forests and wildlife habitats.
“The experience of attending the Coverts Project workshop has made me better able to explain conservation processes, practices, and needs to my neighbors and to the public. It has made me a better manager on my own land, more effective as a conservation commissioner, and more effective in dealing with local government,” reports a recent Coverts Cooperator.
The program has successfully trained nearly 300 Coverts Cooperators who live in over 120 communities throughout the state. Landowners, conservation commissioners, business people, land trust volunteers, doctors, teachers, and writers have all participated in the program over the years. These volunteers are making a difference for New Hampshire’s wildlife and their habitats by managing habitat, promoting a land stewardship ethic, initiating community conservation planning, and helping to protect land.
To request an application (deadline is June 20, 2008), visit the NH Coverts Project website at: www.nhcoverts.org, or phone Malin Clyde, UNH Cooperative Extension, Durham, at 603-862-2166 or email at malin.clyde@unh.edu.