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Clark County program seeks volunteers to help out at Sunset Park

Clark County Parks and Recreation is looking for volunteers to help out the staff at Sunset Park, one of the valley’s oldest and most heavily utilized parks.

To find the right person to coordinate the volunteers, the county went straight to Wetlands Park, where a volunteer program has coordinated with nearly 300 people to help keep the park clean, safe and friendly.

“The volunteers do the sort of activities they want to do,” said Elizabeth Bickmore, program administrator at the county-run Wetlands Park in the east valley. “Some drive golf carts out to check on the trailheads; some just want to pull weeds or report graffiti; others just want to point out the sites and help visitors find what they’re looking for out here.”

Liz Poole has been volunteering at the park with her husband for eight years and finds it satisfying.

“What the volunteers have done for the wetlands is remarkable,” Poole said. “The cleanup of the park from where it was when we started here to where it is now is fantastic.”

Poole volunteers well beyond the requested minimum of four hours per month at the park, and there aren’t many aspects of volunteering there that she hasn’t tried. She loves to walk out in the park and tell people where they can find picturesque views or interesting animals, such as turtles.

Training and organizing new volunteers fell to recreation cultural specialist Crystalaura Jackson. So far, 12 have signed up, and Jackson said 20 to 25 would be an adequate number, but she doesn’t intend to put a limit on how many volunteers the county will take at Sunset Park, 2601 E. Sunset Road. A background check is required.

The volunteers are set to be trained how to interact with park patrons in a nonconfrontational manner. They will be asked to have a cellphone with camera capabilities to document graffiti, vandalism or other concerns they may encounter on their rounds, and they will be provided a volunteer vest and have the option of being provided a trash grabber to pick up small pieces of garbage, which can be dangerous to fowl and patrons.

“Sunset Park is our valley’s recreational crown jewel,” Jackson said. “Lots of people enjoy it every single day. The new Sunset Stewards program can go a long way toward improving the park experience for everyone. Our volunteers can educate users when necessary and be an extra set of eyes and ears to help us identify problems early so that we can address them.”

The volunteers will patrol the 323-acre regional facility on their own schedule and report back to the park staff. The staff is asking that a report be filed every day a volunteer patrols.

“They’ll let us know if there are issues that need to be taken care of and take photos of what the issues are, like graffiti or damaged equipment,” Jackson said. “The most important thing volunteers will do is to engage the public in a positive way and let us know what comments and questions they get from visitors.”

One of the other things volunteers are being asked to do is to let the public know about the laws and rules in the park. One of the more difficult issues that is likely to come up is feeding the animals, particularly the large population of waterfowl. A recent law has made the feeding of wildlife at the parks illegal.

“This is something that the people are used to doing there,” Jackson said. “I think that when they understand that it’s not actually good for the birds, most people will respect that and learn that there are ways to appreciate the wildlife and engage with nature without feeding the birds.”

Jackson explained that the natural diet for geese is grass and insects. For ducks, it’s small fish, tadpoles, algae and other greenery that grows in a lake. The nutrients in those items are very different from the nutrients, or lack thereof, in bread, popcorn or other human food. There is also the issue of the birds associating people with food and losing their instincts to forage and bringing them into dangerous interactions with people and their vehicles.

“You end up with birds that are overfed — a lake that is overcrowded,” Jackson said. “You also end up with people becoming a safety problem for birds and birds becoming a safety problem for people. The geese in particular can be very aggressive.”

Visitors to the park have noticed that the fishing in the stocked lake at Sunset Park can lead to injuries for the birds, which have lost limbs because of circulation problems caused by getting tangled in fishing lines.

“We’re trying to educate the fishermen, too,” Jackson said. “We’re trying to encourage them to use nonbarbed hooks and to use our fishing line disposal containers to throw out tangled lines. There are quite a few of them near the lake, they look a little like yellow periscopes.”

The disposal containers are designed to hold the fishing line inside and not blow out of a trash can and back into the lake.

“The park is for everyone,” Jackson said. “There are a lot of groups that meet out there, and that’s one of the nicest things about that park is that you have all these people who are into different things interacting with each other there. Hopefully, our volunteers can make those interactions run smoothly.”

Call 702-455-8200 or email sunsetstewards@clarkcountynv.gov.

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor, email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.

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