Author: Malcolm Costello | Published: February 5, 2025 | Category: Notes from the Desert
This article originally appeared in The Bulletin on January 30, 2025.
A volunteer recounts the many ways to get involved in Oregon high desert conservation.
One of the many fortunes of being retired is having more time and capacity for volunteering. My ideal volunteer opportunities combine three things: A cause that benefits this Central Oregon region I’ve come to call home; a mission that preserves and enhances the natural environment of a place I’ve explored through my entire adult life; and one that requires actions that get me outside. All things considered, volunteering with Oregon Natural Desert Association has proved to be the perfect fit.
ONDA is a conservation organization dedicated to preserving Oregon’s High Desert through conservation actions that protect public lands, waters and wildlife. It operates restoration projects where the public can get involved in improving the health of desert ecosystems. ONDA restoration projects bring together like-minded conservation advocates through hands-on work in the desert. It offers a wide range of service opportunities and encourage people of all ability levels to partake in stewardship work. I’ve volunteered for single-day group and individual projects, multi-day projects and advocacy on behalf of our fragile High Desert wildlands. All have been extremely enjoyable and rewarding.
Single-day group trips: For the volunteer-curious
I’ve participated in several one-day group trips in the Oregon Badlands Wilderness, just east of Bend, which is a great area to hike in winter, when our favorite summer hikes are deep in snow. The group size is around 12 people, including a knowledgeable staff leader from ONDA, and often staff from the Bureau of Land Management.
The fellow volunteers are great, come from all walks of life, and may have traveled from as far afield as Portland, Salem or Klamath Falls. To my initial surprise, many are not retired but are using days off work to be an active part of this community. There is not much call for my software background, but I love working alongside someone who’s been working outdoors their entire life and can teach me how to repair a fence or build a gate. Project work might include rerouting trails, protecting fragile streamside areas or enhancing wildlife habitat. We also learn so much about the region, its history, geology, flora and fauna from the group leader and other participants.
Multi-day trips: For a full adventure
My favorite stewardship volunteer options are multi-day trips, which are farther afield. Last September, a friend and I drove southeast from La Pine to nearly the California border, through the remote wildlands called the Greater Hart-Sheldon between the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge and the Sheldon refuge in northern Nevada. After some 30-plus miles on a gravel road, we arrived at Beatys Butte, which is quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
Over the next couple of days of protecting a rare wetland habitat, called a riparian zone, I made friends for life — with folks ranging from a retired professor of virology, to a well-tattooed 30-something who works in a dog shelter, to a Native American descendant who has known this land his entire life. We camped. We shared food, stories and humor. We went to bed when it got dark and got up with the sunrise. Our ONDA leader made morning coffee. Our commute was a 1-mile hike to the worksite, a different route each day.
During the day there was work for all, regardless of physical strength, skills or ability; no experience required. In the evening, awareness grows that we are intelligent but insignificant specks in a vast landscape of mountains and buttes, ravines and canyons stretching as far as the eye can see. And at night we stood in awe of the Milky Way filling the sky above our heads, counting shooting stars until we fell asleep. On such trips I also take my gravel bike, as there is always somewhere new and awe-inspiring to ride on the journey out and again on the journey back.
Something for everyone: Conservation from home
Equally important to me is the advocacy and education work on behalf of the High Desert that I can do from the comfort of my armchair. Much of it is as simple as sending ONDA-published conservation articles to friends and colleagues throughout the state, or inviting them to join my wife and I at an ONDA event. Other initiatives require more time and dedication — writing to our government representatives to encourage them to continue advocacy for establishing a new wilderness area in the remarkable Owyhee Canyon, which rivals the Grand Canyon in remoteness and geological complexity. Or writing to the BLM to advocate for greater conservation work in remote desert areas such as Greater Hart-Sheldon or McDermitt Caldera, which are constantly under threat from industrial interests. Writing takes time as I must recognize and comprehend that those competing interests are legitimate, too, and we need to find appropriate ways to share the land while preserving what is culturally and environmentally unique.
What I love most is that ONDA volunteers come from all walks of life, bring all kinds of different skills and experiences, and are bound together by a common sense of purpose. Young and old, male and female, cis and transgender, financially stable or struggling, we all are one in this richly rewarding work of comprehending and caring for the ground we walk on and the scenery we admire.
I hope you’ll choose to be part of it too.
—Malcolm Costello is retired from a career in software and enjoys gravel biking and volunteering with the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
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