Get involved by donating your skills and time as a volunteer. Together, we can ensure a future for North Carolina’s wonderful wildlife and the habitats critical for their survival. Check out the available opportunities below and learn how you can get involved in your area.
Fishing Education Volunteer
Hunter Education Volunteer
Getting Started Outdoors
Calling Amphibian Surveys
Monitoring Songbirds
Tracking Reptile and Amphibian Populations
Monitoring Bat Populations
Sea Turtle Projects
Waterbird Projects
John E. Pechmann Fishing Education Center
Aquatic Habitat Enhancement Projects
Are you someone who enjoys spending time and creating memories with friends and family casting a line at your favorite fishing spot? The NCWRC Fishing Education Team needs volunteers to help others to create their own great fishing memories. Volunteers assist staff with educational programs to include instruction, program development and presentation, and material and equipment organization and maintenance. These programs are developed to serve the fishing interest and needs of our various target audiences of all ages and skill levels. Volunteer assistance and independent activities allow the Fishing and Aquatic Education staff to extend their hours and energy to broaden the scope of educational opportunities that are offered, thereby giving constituents a broader, better educational experience, paving the way toward increased fishing participation.
Volunteers will be trained and mentored in the skills necessary to provide professional support to staff and competent instruction to our participants. Anyone above the age of 18 interested in serving the community as a volunteer instructor with the Fishing Education Team may apply. Each person must complete a volunteer application and consent to a background check before beginning their volunteer career. The application and background check must be completed before the applicant can attend the Volunteer orientation and Basic Fishing Instructor Trainings.
Contact: Tom Carpenter 910-868-5003
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Hunter Education Instructors are volunteers within their community who teach hunter education courses. They share knowledge and appreciation of the sport of hunting, while they promote conservation and safe, responsible outdoor recreation.
Volunteers must be 21 years old, pass a background check and satisfy training requirements to instruct a standardized state curriculum. View a list of instructor workshops. They follow a code of conduct and accept the responsibility to be dependable, prompt and efficient.
North Carolina Volunteer Instructors are important and valued members of the hunter education team. Each year, the NCWRC highlights instructors of the year, as well as Hall Fame Inductees. Visit our Hunter Education Awards page for more information.
A significant amount of volunteer support is essential to the agency's Getting Started Outdoors program, which is designed for new hunters to help them learn hunting basics, such as new hunting skills, equipment and strategies and wild game processing and cooking. How can volunteers get involved? They can:
If interested, please email gso@ncwildlife.org
If you are familiar with frog calls, you can volunteer for a route with the Calling Amphibian Survey Program. This is a night survey where you listen for frog calls. The program requires being able to identify frogs by sound, but training sessions are available. To find out more, visit N.C. Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation or contact Jeff Hall for more information or to choose a route.
The Wildlife Diversity Program monitors songbird populations throughout the year using various methods, including aural surveys and bird banding. There are also numerous opportunities for people across the country to engage in other citizen science programs, including the North American Breeding Bird Survey, Project FeederWatch, the Great Backyard Bird Count, eBird, NC Bird Atlas and many others through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Contact Christine Kelly (western) or Scott Anderson (statewide) for more information about these and other opportunities.
Help NCWRC biologists track reptile and amphibian populations by registering with the HerpMapper project and reporting your observations.
The Wildlife Diversity Program has several efforts underway to monitor North Carolina’s bats (most in the mountains of N.C.), including winter surveys of hibernating bats, surveillance for White Nose Syndrome (a deadly bat disease), long term monitoring at summer habitats, and bat acoustic surveys (NC BAMP – Bat Acoustic Monitoring Program). Contact Katherine Etchison to find out about volunteer opportunities with bats. (Photo: Katherine Etchison)
NaBAT Volunteer Resources
There are 22 active sea turtle beach projects along North Carolina’s coastline that monitor sea turtle nesting and stranding in partnership with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. For information about sea turtle volunteering opportunities at a specific beach or island, contact Matt Godfrey
Coastal North Carolina is home to many species of marsh-, shore-, sea-, and wading birds. To keep these species common along our coast, and to monitor rare species closely, the Wildlife Diversity Program conducts seasonal surveys and research, and protects important habitat. If you are interested in assisting with surveys of Piping Plovers, American Oystercatchers, colonial-nesting waterbirds, or other species; ongoing research projects; or habitat protection activities, contact Carmen Johnson for more information. (Photo: Scott Anderson)
The John E. Pechmann Fishing Education Center offers volunteer opportunities for Scouts, anglers and people interested in helping in programming or grounds maintenance and enhancement.
The NCWRC enhances aquatic habitat in reservoirs by building and installing fish attractors and establishing native aquatic vegetation. These projects take a lot of effort and volunteer support is essential to make them successful. Fisheries Biologists establish native aquatic vegetation in various Piedmont reservoirs from late May to August. This work entails building fenced exclosures to protect vegetation and planting vegetation in ankle to hip deep water. There also may be opportunities to help at the NCWRC aquatic plant nursery in Mebane NC. Contact Mark Fowlkes for more information for these and other opportunities.
2023 Volunteer Opportunities (PDF)