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Home > Desert Oracle Radio > 70+ volunteers participated in fire mitigation and cleanup at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve
Podcast: Desert Oracle Radio
Episode:

70+ volunteers participated in fire mitigation and cleanup at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-10-01 15:56:34
Description:

The Big Morongo Canyon Preserve reported a successful National Public Lands Day cleanup on last Saturday (September 26) with over 70 volunteers helping downed timber alongside the boardwalk.

As part of a massive fire mitigation project, three different crews of people helped at the Preserve last Saturday, including forty-seven California Cadet Crew members and eleven Marines, rounded out by community volunteers totaling over seventy people. While some strict preservationists may argue the removed timber is considered habitat for insects and smaller wildlife, Wong reminds us of the Preserve’s “human behavior issue,” with littered cigarettes, broken glass, and other careless manmade folly that could prove disastrous for the area. 

Volunteers hauling fallen lumber. Photo courtesy of BMCP

“It’s the humans that we’re worried about. We’re getting a little bit of blowback from people, mostly preservationists, who say we shouldn’t be pulling habitat out, like the lumber because insects live within it; they burrow, they nest, they feed, and perhaps other animals living underneath it in the softer moisture soil. And so yes, it is habitat but by the same token we’re not spending time deep in the preserve pulling the habitat out, right? We’re just working in the areas where human interfaces take place just off the boardwalk, where there’s a bunch of lumber that needs to be pulled out. That’s where we find cigarette butts so it’s the humans that we have to deal with,” said Wong.  

California Cadet Corps take a break from cleaning Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. Photo courtesy of BMCP.

With over seventy helpers, Wong said there was still enough pizza to go around, generously donated by Morongo Valley’s Just a Small-Town Grill. Wong says the Preserve does these cleanups twice a year: in April for Earth Day, and on National Public Lands Day in September. Upcoming improvement projects include the new native plant botanical garden in November and December with seventeen volunteers already slated for the installation.

The eleven Marines from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center who worked alongside the California Cadet Corps. Photo courtesy of BMCP.

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