Help Keep Mount Diablo Beautiful By Volunteering

If you love looking at Mount Diablo, there's a way you can help the landmark mountain by volunteering a few hours of your time on a Sunday in April.

Save Mount Diablo and the REI store in Concord are sponsoring a service project to help restore part of Marsh Creek on the mountain's northern slopes.

Patch is teaming up with the non-profit organization and the Concord store to help recruit volunteers. Patch editors David Mills, Jim Caroompas, Adalto Nascimento and Lance Howard will be among the volunteers.

The service project is from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Sunday, April 15. The work will include removing invasive, non-native plants as well as watering 500 native plants previously planted.

You can sign up or obtain more information by going to the REI calendar page for this item or by emailing REI store manager April Rovero at arovero@rei.com.

There are 40 slots open for the project. As of Tuesday afternoon, 25 slots were left.

Beryl Anderson, communications coordinator for Save Mount Diablo, said these volunteer projects help restore the ecosystem on the mountain as well as make it accessible and enjoyable for visitors.

"Without volunteers, we wouldn't be able to restore these lands," she said. "The volunteering is fun and beneficial and it gives the volunteer a closer relationship to nature."

Join Patch, REI and Save Mount Diablo in this volunteer effort. If you sign up, drop us a note and let us know. Also use the comments section with this article to talk about the project.

Patch hopes to build a team of Patch Corps volunteers to help with more projects on Mount Diablo as well as other projects throughout our communities.