Over 100,000 people a year visit the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. Beginning with the fall season and the influx of waterfowl and visitors, the Refuge is a busy place with only a few permanent employees. The Refuge relies on volunteers to help staff the Visitor Center, enabling the Center to be open seven days a week.

On October 1, 2005, Blackwater Refuge opened a newly renovated and enlarged Visitor Center. More volunteers are now needed to staff the information desk and provide information to the visiting public, as well as to assist the Friends of Blackwater in the daily operation of the wonderful Eagle's Nest Gift and Book Shop. Training is provided to all volunteers.

The main requirement to being a Blackwater volunteer is a willingness to meet and talk with people -- and knowing how to smile! Volunteers will be helping people from all over the world while learning firsthand about Blackwater's numerous and fascinating wildlife. If you are interested in wildlife, like people, and enjoy educating others about wildlife and Dorchester County, then this is the job for you!

Volunteers staffing the Visitor Center will normally work an 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. or a 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. shift during the weekdays; but we especially need weekend volunteers who would work a 9:00am to 1:00pm or 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. shift on weekends. You can work as many shifts as you want including all day once a month, once a week, or more often. We are aiming for two people for every shift. It's a great chance to work with your spouse if you want to do something together.

Volunteers are also needed for other types of activities at the Refuge including: performing maintenance (painting, fence building, mowing grass, constructing hiking trails, and janitorial cleaning); assisting with biological surveys and studies (invasive species mapping, frog surveys, shorebird surveys, breeding bird surveys, bluebird box surveys, plant identification, planting trees and marsh grass, and bird box repair); answering phones and filing; maintaining a computer data base; numbering, cataloging, and organizing library books; assisting with environmental education programs and training; and being a tour guide for bus tours, trail walks, and orientation programs to the Refuge.

If you are interested in learning how to give bus tours, orientations to the Refuge, and/or trail walks, a training session will probably be held in the near future but may also be done individually when one of these programs is scheduled during the week. If you cannot attend the training sessions, on-the-job training can be done for certain types of tasks, such as learning the procedures used at the Visitor Center. Every year a major training session (spread out over three different days) is held in August and consists of an updated training session regarding procedures, a bus tour of the Refuge property, and a day-long conference where volunteers are updated on the various Refuge management programs through slides, talks, and various media. This training is only offered once a year during the summer, when visitation numbers are low.

Friends of Blackwater

Another way to help Blackwater Refuge is to become a member of the Friends of Blackwater. The Friends are a nonprofit citizens support group that raises money for Blackwater Refuge through their gift shop at the Refuge (as well as other activities such as open houses, grants, and the hunt program) and uses the funds to finance various educational, interpretive, and wildlife-oriented recreational programs at Blackwater that are not funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to shrinking federal budgets. In 2003, the Friends of Blackwater were named the Refuge System "Friends Group of the Year," and many projects at the Refuge could not be accomplished without the financial assistance and volunteer labor of the Friends.

Each year the Friends thank their volunteers with special members' events, volunteer recognition dinners, field trips, and other activities to show appreciation for all the outstanding work they do.

The Friends of Blackwater have members from all over the United States, but most of the working members are also volunteers from the local area. Everyone is invited to attend their monthly meetings, usually the second Tuesday of the month at 10am in the Refuge Headquarters conference room. Visit the Friends page on this website for more information or visit the Friends of Blackwater website for details about the organization, membership, and the Friends' work at the Refuge.

More Information

Blackwater Refuge is a wonderful place to volunteer, so come join us as we help out nature while having a great time. If you are interested in any of these volunteer positions, please don't hesitate to call Maggie Briggs at 410-228-2677 or email her at maggie_briggs@fws.gov to find out more about the positions and the volunteer training. And be sure to check the Calendar for information on the August volunteer training sessions.