Fort McHenry Field Day

We need your help. Donate or volunteer today!

Leader

Stephanie Pully

Location

2400 East Fort Ave Baltimore, MD 21230

About the project

Every spring the National Aquarium partners with the National Park Service to recruit volunteers to restore habitat for wildlife, remove debris, and maintain trails at the wetland adjacent to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. Volunteers represent the diversity of the Baltimore community and come from local community associations, corporations, schools, churches, civic groups, social clubs, and others. Since the National Aquarium took over stewardship of the Fort McHenry Wetland in 1999, volunteers have helped collect nearly 600,000 pieces of debris! Fort McHenry Field Days are more than just debris cleanups, however; work also includes trail maintenance, light construction, and planting native flowers in our rain and butterfly gardens. This work all adds up to create a valuable green space in the heart of Baltimore City that is utilized by hundreds of species of birds, reptiles like box turtles and diamondback terrapins, and aquatic critters like juvenile blue crabs and small fish.

By supporting the Fort McHenry Field Day, you help make the marsh a cleaner place for native animals to live, and a great place for student groups from the city and surrounding counties to learn about marsh ecology.

The Steps

To reach habitat restoration and resource protection goals for this project, the Aquarium will host a community based restoration event at a ten-acre tidal urban wetland bordering Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in the Baltimore Harbor watershed. The Aquarium will partner with the National Park Service to engage 100 community volunteers dedicating a total of 500 volunteer service hours to the project.

We hold 2 annual cleanups at Fort McHenry- one in the spring, and one in the fall. Aquarium staff will lead community volunteers in the field participating in hands-on habitat restoration activities including the removal of at least 15,000 pieces of marine debris, maintenance of the butterfly and rain gardens, trail maintenance, and other activities at the Fort McHenry Field Station.

Why we‘re doing it

The Fort McHenry Field Day provides an opportunity to donate both your time and money towards the maintenance of an urban wetland, which continually gets clogged with debris posing a threat to the aquatic and terrestrial life that call the wetland home.

$172.00

Raised

$172.00 / $172.00

Ended