By:Clark Corbin–September 18, 20254:05 am

Environmental organizations in Idaho are looking for volunteers who want to help protect America’s public lands by cleaning up the Sawtooth National Recreation Area this month.

Organizations including the Idaho Conservation League, the Idaho Trails Association, the Sawtooth Society, Idaho Rivers United, the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association, the Wood River Trails Coalition and the Environmental Resource Center have partnered with the U.S. Forest Service for the annual cleanup event.

The cleanup campaign began Monday and runs through Sept. 29.

For the event, interested volunteers can sign up online and pick the date they would like to clean up the Sawtooths.

Volunteers can select a cleanup mission in the front country (which organizers define as areas that can be reached by car, such as a developed campground) or in the backcountry (which organizers define as an area that can only be reached by foot, such as a trail in the Sawtooth Wilderness where motorized travel is not allowed).

“While this is a volunteer opportunity and there is a service aspect to it, this is also a great opportunity to go out and enjoy yourself on our public lands and appreciate those lands for yourself and reconnect with why public lands are so special and so important,” said Lexi Black, a Ketchum community engagement associate with the Idaho Conservation League.

Black said the cleanup campaign is a self-directed effort where volunteers select the date and areas they would like to volunteer on within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Central Idaho. The online sign up page lists potential sites for volunteers to choose to protect, such as Pettit Lake or campgrounds at Stanley Lake. But volunteers can also select their own spot to clean up even if it is not listed.

Once they sign up online, volunteers will receive an email with instructions and an opportunity to pick up any materials they will need.

Last year, 51 volunteers signed up for the cleanup.

This year’s public lands cleanup campaign could be especially significant because of federal cuts that reduced the U.S. Forest Service staff, and resulted in reduced hours and cutbacks at local offices in Idaho, including Sawtooth field offices.

One of Idaho’s crown jewels, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area includes jagged mountain peaks, crystal clear alpine lakes, wild rivers, miles of hiking trails and a diverse fish and wildlife habitat. Congress protected the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in 1972 to preserve it.

During the cleanup, volunteers may collect garbage, remove human waste and dismantle illegal fire rings and other artificial manmade structures.

Once they are in the field for the cleanup project, Black encourages volunteers to think about what their area would look like if the previous users practiced Leave No Trace principles. Leave No Trace principles for outdoor recreation include properly disposing of or packing out all waste, minimizing campfire impacts, respecting wildlife and camping and traveling on durable surfaces.

Essentially, Leave No Trace users seek to preserve the outdoors in its natural state and never remove anything natural from the environment.

“When they go through an area, we always encourage them to look for areas where other folks might have left a trace and then going through the effort of undoing that for them,” Black said.

The annual Sawtooth public lands cleanup campaign got its start in 2020. Since the beginning, volunteers have removed a total of 240 industrial size garbage bags full of waste from the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, organizers said.