The Site Stewardship Program organizes a team of interns and volunteers to take on ecological restoration and guardianship for sensitive natural areas within the UCSC campus. The program seeks to alleviate the impact that university growth is having on the landscape of the campus. The result of past natural resource extraction and university build-out has caused habitat destruction, invasion of non-native species, and soil erosion.

Students can gain field work experience by interning with the Site Stewardship Program. Interns perform a combination of ecological restoration, public outreach, interpretation, and education. Projects interns could work on include population monitoring, vegetative mapping, invasive plant removal, native seed collection, baseline data collection, revegetation, erosion control, and developing outreach materials.

If you are interested in becoming an intern or a volunteer, please email grounds_interns@ucsc.edu.

Keywords:  Site Stewardship Program; interns; volunteers; ecological restoration; habitat destruction; invasion of non-native species; and soil erosion; field work; ecological restoration; public outreach; interpretation; education; population monitoring; vegetative mapping; invasive plant removal; native seed collection; greenhouse; propagation, invasive plant removal