In the spring of 2006, Friends of Rose Canyon received a phone call from REI, the outdoor gear and clothing store, with a query: “We’re looking for a volunteer work project for our employees – could we help out in Rose Canyon?”

Friends of Rose Canyon called up Rose Canyon’s “restorer general”, Ben Stevenson, who has also served as chair of the City’s Rose Canyon Recreation Council, and who for years has volunteered on projects restoring native plants in Rose Canyon. A month later, everyone showed up at the appointed meeting spot to get to work – all except the expected 15 employees from REI.  Instead, there were 35 REI volunteers!

Undeterred by this tripling of his expected troops, Ben divided them into two brigades, appointed leaders to each one, and set the biggest group to work ripping out the non-native honeysuckle that had twined and draped and tied itself around every tree and bush in the streamside area that was his latest restoration project.

The volunteers hacked and cut and yanked and dragged.  They watched an opossum amble off from a pile of leaves, and discovered hidden in the leaves a nest of baby possums. They carefully covered them back up.  Two hours later, when it was time for the volunteers to head back to the store, they had accomplished what Ben had intended to be the better part of a year’s worth of work.

REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) was founded in the 1938 as a cooperative by climbers in the Pacific Northwest who came together to buy climbing gear more cheaply. Soon, other outdoor people joined, and the coop offered more kinds of equipment. Today, REI has 85 stores nationwide, including one in San Diego a few miles from Rose Canyon and one in Encinitas.  But it remains a consumer cooperative, with a strong commitment to volunteerism and trail maintenance and restoration in the communities where its stores are located. Kara Stone, store manager in San Diego, says: “We want to be sure our members know that we don’t only value their time in the store, we value their time in the outdoors.”

After that first successful event, REI asked if their employees could come on a regular basis to volunteer in Rose Canyon.  An REI staff member nominated Friends of Rose Canyon for a $5,000 REI grant. The company supports local conservation by allowing employees to vote on non-profit organizations that they think are valuable and should receive grants. The grant was approved, and as part of it, REI employees will continue to work with Ben Stevenson and Friends of Rose Canyon, and community volunteers recruited to participate. The grant will also support the nature walks that Friends of Rose Canyon co-sponsors with the City of San Diego Park and Recreation Department, which bring hundreds of children and adults a year into the canyon to experience and learn about the outdoors.

REI volunteers now return every month or two. They have taken on maintenance of the area along the trail that leads down into the canyon from the parking area at the dead-end of Regents Road in south University City.  The volunteers arrive early on a Saturday morning; some wearing their REI “Get Dirty” volunteer t-shirts. Ben Stevenson doles out weed whackers, special heavy duty hoe/rake combination tools called McClouds, loppers, rakes and gloves. The non-native plants seem to vanish as they are cut and carried off in large blue tarps. In 1997, the City of San Diego received a Habitat Conservation Fund grant from California State Parks to remove non-native plants from the streambed and surrounding area here, and replant with natives. Ben Stevenson put in some of the 3,000 hours of volunteer labor for that project, and is amazed at how the native willow trees have thrived since then. But restoration projects need maintaining, and that requires the kind of significant effort that REI’s volunteers have brought to the task.

A number of the REI volunteers are new hires. Part of their paid training includes a volunteer work project to introduce them to the company’s commitment to volunteerism in the local community. Others are regular employees who come as part of their personal commitment to hands-on projects in the outdoors. REI likes to hire people who enjoy this kind of volunteering.

“We were looking for something really local to get our employees involved in trail work,” says Kara Stone. “Rose Canyon is one of our fabulous urban style parks that it is important for us to support. One thing that attracted us to Rose Canyon was, it’s a beautiful place and it’s rare to find that in an urban setting. A lot of our employees didn’t realize there was something there.”