• Conservation volunteering helps preserve natural areas for future generations.glacier national park image by Melissa Schalke from Fotolia.com
  
  Donating your time to local conservation projects helps save the natural environment for future generations. Many state and national parks, as well as environmental research centers, outdoor education centers and nature preserves have limited funding and staff availability and can almost always use help from local volunteers. Volunteering can involve everything from gathering signatures from your fellow citizens to hard, physical labor. You can contact your local parks or wildlife centers directly or volunteer through an organization.
  
  

Student Conservation Association

• Consider serving with the Student Conservation Association if you're a high school or college student. The Student Conservation Association runs volunteer conservation programs throughout the United States. Their programs include traveling volunteer opportunities, such as joining one of the national crews and spending a month during the summer traveling to various parks for maintenance and restoration projects with groups of other high school students. Community programs offer inner-city students a chance to branch out and volunteer at regional parks and experience natural environments they might not get to see in their day-to-day lives. The Student Conservation Association also helps find internship opportunities for college students.
  
  

TogetherGreen Volunteer Days

• Environment conservation organization TogetherGreen hosts volunteer days throughout the year all across the United States. On these days, TogetherGreen enlists local volunteers to help with a variety of conservation projects at Audubon sites in different states. Past projects have included building nest boxes at the Chinook Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana and building a walking trail around Lake Springfield in Missouri. From September 2008 to August 2010, more than 19,000 volunteers have served on one of TogetherGreen's volunteer days.
  
  

International Volunteering

• If you'd prefer to get involved with volunteer conservation projects abroad, several organizations arrange trips for volunteering vacations. Pacific Discovery offers a two-week stay in New Zealand to work on conservation projects in the Bay of Islands and Nelson regions, interspersed with outdoor adventure excursions such as rock climbing and mountain biking. You can enlist the aid of uVolunteer to join conservation projects abroad, such as working in Ghana's national parks to educate local communities as well as tourists about the importance of preserving local wildlife. Note that volunteering abroad generally requires a fee for room and board in addition to the purchase of your own airline tickets.
  
  

National Park Service

• The United States National Park Service routinely takes on volunteers at national parks around the country. Use their website to search more than 400 national parks to find openings in your area. Typical projects include working in visitors centers, conservation education programs, park clean-up, trail maintenance and assisting park rangers with more complex tasks like wildlife rehabilitation.