Volunteer

The Santa Fe Conservation Trust could not do its work without the help of amazing volunteers. From land monitoring and stewardship to maintaining and building trails, planning and setting up events and community engagement, or simply helping out around the office, we always have ways that volunteers can get involved with our programs.

If you would like to get started, please subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive updates on what we are up to and where we could use some help:

Contact Us

If you know what you’d like to do and want to jump right in, here are some specific areas in which you can help:

Trail Maintenance & Construction

Trail work opportunities are listed on our website at https://sfct.org/trails/. No experience is necessary. Trail work usually takes place during weekdays and is seasonal (not happening in the winter). Tim Rogers is our Trail Program Manager and can give you more information about specific trail work. Feel free to contact him at .

Community Conservation

The íVámonos!: Santa Fe Walks program offers a number of one-hour walks per month (May-October). Most are after-work hours on paved ADA accessible trails in the city except for one per month on dirt trails. The hikes on dirt trails take place on Saturdays and are usually two hours in length. Volunteers are needed at every walk to walk along with participants ensuring that everyone can walk at their own pace. You would also help to distribute a sign-up sheet before walks begin and a brief survey after. You can sign up to volunteer for one or more walks/hikes by letting Randle Charles, Community Engagement Director, know at .

https://sfct.org/vamonos/

Special Events

We are also grateful to our volunteers for helping plan special events such as the Banff Mountain Film Festival each March and our annual Stand Up for Nature (SUN) celebration each fall. Banff requires volunteers at the Lensic for two nights in March, and SUN is planned by a volunteer committee, staff, and board. The committee begins meeting in late winter/early spring through September (event is on Saturday, October 4 at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market Railyard Pavilion) to support the SFCT staff on all aspects of the fall celebration. In addition to the planning committee, volunteers are needed the day before to gather flowers, on the day of SUN to assist in putting the flower centerpieces together and for set up and take down, and sometimes during the event for roles such as serving food and drinks. Contact .

We sometimes need volunteer help for other smaller events, e.g., Stargazing Party, donor events, Galisteo Property events, etc. Contact .

Land Monitoring & Stewardship

As an accredited land trust, we monitor the thousands of acres of our conservation easements in northern New Mexico every year, and a few more boots on the ground is always appreciated. After an initial training session to learn how to use GPS equipment and reporting on monitoring visits, you can explore our beautiful landscape with us!

SFCT owns the 300-acre Galisteo Property in the Galisteo Basin, where we are always hard at work restoring the beautiful landscape, showcasing ways of revitalizing this area. Reseeding, creating erosion control structures and measuring our progress with bull’s eye monitoring are all carried out on a regular basis.

If you are interested in either of these land program activities, please contact our Stewardship Director, Melissa Houser at .

Dark Skies

We are looking for volunteers to help with our Eyes on the Night Sky (EONS) device that is tracking the amount of light pollution in the night sky around Santa Fe. We need help to periodically download data, change batteries and keep the lenses that protect the filters clean. Contact Brian at if you are interested.