How to Become a Conservationist

People have been interested in conservation for decades. In fact, President Theodore Roosevelt was an early conservationist, considerably ahead of his time over 100 years ago. Al Gore helped renew the public's interest in conservation with his 2006 film, "An Inconvenient Truth." You, too, can become active in the Conservationist movement either as part of an organized group or just by doing things in your own yard and home.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Organized Conservation Movement

1. Run or apply for a position with your city parks department to become active in park and green space restoration and expansion. Find out if your city government is involved in any county or state projects encouraging conservation and throw your support behind it in any way you can, be it by voting, by volunteering or by heading up a committee.
2. Join your local economic and community development corporations to attract businesses to your town that embrace "green" philosophies. These companies will build "green" offices that are more energy efficient than regular offices and encourage all their employees to see their work environment through conservationist's eyes.
3. Check into membership in a local chapter of one of the nationally or internationally known conservationist organizations such as Greenpeace, Ducks Unlimited or Safari Club International. If there is not a local chapter nearby, look up contact info on one of these major group's websites, then consider starting a local group yourself.
4. Petition your city council or other local governing body to pass ordinances requiring developers to retain as many trees as possible, choosing instead to build roads and housing developments around the largest, oldest of trees. Ask the local leaders to consider incentive plans for developers who are "green" conscious.
5. Organize a conservationist group in your city and hold monthly meetings. These could be small and just held in someone's home, or you could ask a school, bank building or community center about using their facility. You can invite speakers to make presentations to your group on things like global warming and local conservation, hold screenings of movies like "An Inconvenient Truth" and the Discovery TV "Planet Earth" series and organize Earth Day, Arbor Day and other similar observations. Open the meetings up to everyone, even reaching out to teens who love to get passionately involved in a cause.

At Home

6. Use landscape materials that retain moisture such as a thick layer of mulch or volcanic rock. Rather than buy the mulch at a garden shop, contact your city to see if they have any free mulch for pick up anywhere in town. Often cities will recycle downed tree branches and old Christmas trees by running it through a chipper, then leaving the piles somewhere for people to help themselves. Such material will help to retain moisture in your flowerbeds so you don't need to water as often.
7. Contact a local nursery or wildlife sanctuary to learn what shrubs, flowers and trees are native to your area. Filling your landscape areas with native plant material will mean less watering as these plants are already accustomed to the rain levels (or lack of) that you have in your region of the country.
8. Recycle everything you can possibly recycle rather than filling your trash bags with recyclable items. Every type of packaging, can or plastic bottle that can be put in your recycle bin should be. Get your kids in on the act by putting one of them in charge of it.
9. Organize a neighborhood pick-up day a couple times a year--or more often, if you have a lot of enthusiastic neighbors--to walk around your neighborhood and pick up trash. This will help conserve the beauty of the area where you live and is nature-friendly, too, as it removes potentially harmful refuse from the areas where animals could come in contact with it.
10. Install low-flow toilets and shower heads in your home bathrooms. Also consider double-flush toilets where the greater amount of water is used when flushing solid waste. Liquid waste uses very little water to flush. Update your utility room with a more water-efficient washing machine.