St. Johns Regional Audubon is aways looking for volunteers to help us with our outreach into our local
community. Currently, we are specifically looking for:

• Volunteers who want to work with kids (retired teachers are especially needed!) as part of
  our Education Committee.
• Volunteers to help at our event tables.
• Volunteers to help us at the St. Augustine Audubon Native Plant Garden.
• Volunteers to help us develop a bird monitoring program at Dr. Robert B. Hayling Freedom
  Park.

More Details on Educational Volunteer Opportunities…

St. Johns County Parks & Rec partnership
Bird walk leaders for children and families. Most walks are held at Alpine Groves and Vaill Point Parks and take about 1-1/4 hours of your time. It is not necessary to be a birding “expert,” as these are generally an introduction to birding types of events and may include a short activity such as a scavenger hunt or identification game. It can also be helpful to have two leaders working together.

Girl Scouts and Homeschool Groups
Lessons about birds for youth. Ages can vary from kindergarten through high school. These educational activities would generally take between 1 and 2 hours, but volunteers would also need some prep time to assemble materials and review resources. For the educational projects, we plan to have an in-person meeting for those interested in volunteering to review lesson plans, materials, and resources, possibly in January 2025.

If you have a preference in age ranges to work with, please include that in your email response:

• Early childhood through elementary school
• Middle and high school
• Adults
• General public

Tabling Events
We periodically set up an information table at community festivals and events. We are looking for members who enjoy meeting new people and sharing our topics of interest. We usually also have a game or activity for kids. Volunteers are needed for 2 to 6 hours. The ability to transport and help set up the table, display, and canopy tent would be particularly helpful.

On March 21, 2025, the County has issued its first ever Strategic Plan. With the Strategic Plan as a guide, all other County plans and initiatives are supposed to align so that “everything flows in a common direction.”

One of the six core priorities is “enhance conservation,” which the plan defines as:

“Collaborate with key stakeholders and partners to protect environmentally sensitive lands and natural resources. Explore opportunities and incentives for developers to contribute to land conservation and preservation.”

Many of our Chapter members participated in the stakeholder processes leading up to the issuance of the Strategic Plan and – along with other conservation-minded residences – helped ensure that land conservation, opportunities for outdoor recreation, and resiliency were included in the Plan.

Here is an interesting graph from the Community Survey Results that show how much St. Johns County residences value these conservation priorities.

Details of the conservation strategy results can be found on pages 16 and 17 of the Plan, which you can view at this website, as well as the results of the Community Survey:

https://www.sjcfl.us/sjc-strategic-plan/

The County plans to use strategic planning software to plan, monitor, and publicly report progress toward its goals and objectives, as well as performance measures.

The County is still in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan, which will likely lead changes in its Land Development Code.