Help Keep It Pretty ~ April 2021

HELP US KEEP IT PRETTY!

We’ve teamed up with our friends at The Sleepy WHale & Odell Brewing Co. to help Mother Nature!

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We’re making April Earth Month!

For the month of April, The Sleepy Whale is donating the proceeds of Sippin’ Pretty draft pours to Natural Restorations to assist us with keeping the great outdoors clean!

Want to take action yourself!? We’re also doing an Instagram giveaway with The Sleepy Whale & Odell Brewing Co.! Get outside and help keep our trails clean! Steps on how to get involved below 😎

• When on your next outdoor adventure, pick up as much trash as you can!
• Take a picture of yourself in nature with your trash collection
• When posting your pic, use the hashtags: #helpkeepitpretty2021 & #makeitpretty2021

We’ll pick 3 winners May 1st! We have some sweet prizes to give out!

Including an Odell Hammock, Pocket Knife, Camping Mug, Natural Restorations’ 40oz Tru Flask, Sleepy Whale shirt & MORE!

Help us protect our beautiful planet! 🌎

Thank you to everyone at The Sleepy Whale & Odell Brewing Co. for your continued support!

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We're Teaming Up with AZ Outdoors!

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We're excited to team up with AZ Outdoors!

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Through the month of April, for every purchase of their Camco portable fire pit on their website, they will donate a portion of the sale to Natural Restorations.

We love portable propane fire pits because they help cut down on wildfire danger.

If the wind picks up, just turn it off! Super simple!

Thank you to everyone at AZ Outdoors for your support!

Pick up a fire pit today and help our nonprofit organization, click HERE.

January Lower Salt River Restoration Project

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In January, our Dedicated Restoration Team resumed work on the Lower Salt River Restoration Project with Program Managers from the EcoCulture team at NAU. ⁠

We planted 4,560 trees, including Godding's willow, Freemont cottonwood, Velvet mesquite, Screw Bean mesquite, and Coyote willow in the area between Granite Reef and Phon D Sutton that was impacted by the 2017 Cactus Fire. *Between this project and our first replanting project in November 2020, our Dedicated Restoration Team has planted 10,104 trees! ⁠⁠
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You can view additional pictures from this project by clicking HERE. We also launched a Replanting page on our website where you can see all of our replanting projects. Click HERE to view our Replanting page.

2020 Overall Totals for Natural Restorations

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Before we get too far into 2021, we would like to take a moment to highlight what we accomplished in 2020 with our Dedicated Restoration Team and volunteers. ⁠⁠
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In 2020, Natural Restorations removed 219,552 pounds of trash (109.77 tons), removed and recycled 320 tires, removed 4,674 square feet of graffiti, and planted 5,544 saplings. ⁠⁠
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In addition to the results of our 2020 Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Recreation-fund grant administered by Arizona State Parks & Trails that we shared 2 posts back, we worked on several other grant projects in 2020.⁠⁠
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We removed graffiti from the Washington Park Tunnel along the Arizona Trail, Granite Dells in Payson, Blue Wash Trail in Cave Creek, and Blue Point, Fox Tail, & Coon Bluff Recreation Areas on the Lower Salt River thanks to grants from REI. ⁠⁠Click HERE to view all of these projects.
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We removed graffiti from the Boulders Loop Trail in Payson, we removed trash from several areas around the Superstition Mountains, and we removed trash and graffiti from Needle Rock Recreation Area though grants from ON Semiconductor.⁠ Click HERE to view all of these projects.
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We also launched a Replanting Program in 2020 and planted 5,544 saplings at Lower Salt River in November 2020. ⁠⁠Click HERE to view the project.
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We hosted 5 volunteer events between January 2020 & March 2020, including a Base & Meridian Wildlife Area Cleanup on 01/04/20, a Lower Salt River Cleanup with American Rivers & Verizon on 01/16/20, the 11th annual Hewitt Station OHV Area Cleanup on 01/18/20, our Lower Salt River President's Day Weekend Cleanup on 02/15/20, and our Sugar Loaf OHV Area Cleanup on 03/07/20. ⁠⁠
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Click HERE to check out our past volunteer events and click HERE to check out our Dedicated Restoration Team projects. ⁠⁠

02/13/21 Hewitt Station Cleanup Results

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13,340⁠ pounds of trash (6.67 tons) & 4 tires removed from Hewitt Station OHV Area! That's 6.67 tons of trash no longer littering this part of the Tonto National Forest.

Click HERE view all of the photos from this project and see all of the organizations that helped make the event a success. ⁠⁠

Thanks again to everyone who helped make both of the 12th Annual Hewitt Station Environmental Stewardship Events with Footprints Matter to Us a huge success!⁠ ⁠

Sign up for our Volunteer Email List so you never miss an event!

2020 OHV-Fund Grant Totals

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We are excited to share the results of our 2020 Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Recreation Fund Grant administered by Arizona State Parks & Trails. Click HERE to check out pictures and additional information.

We removed 184,120 pounds of trash (92.06 tons), 275 tires removed and recycled, and we removed 2,938 square feet of graffiti painted on rocks and boulders in OHV areas across Arizona. ⁠Thank you to everyone on our Dedicated Restoration Team, our volunteers, and all of the organizations that helped make this possible!⁠⁠

Through this grant, our Dedicated Restoration Team completed 24 projects in OHV areas across Arizona. Our team removed 164,890 pounds of trash, that's 82.49 tons! We also removed 261 tires and 2,938 square feet of graffiti painted on rocks and boulders in OHV areas. Volunteers also helped us remove 28,620 pounds of trash and 14 tires from Hewitt Station & Sugar Loaf OHV Areas.⁠⁠

Thank you to the Arizona Off-Highway (OHV) Recreation Fund Administered by Arizona State Parks & Trails for awarding this grant to Natural Restorations!⁠⁠

We worked on Arizona State Trust Land, the Tonto National Forest, the Coconino National Forest, the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, and the Prescott National Forest. Thank you to everyone at these land management agencies for supporting our projects!⁠

These projects were also possible due to support from the following organizations: Arizona Toy Pros, Battle Born Offroad, CopperPoint Insurance Companies, Davidson’s Inc., Desert Monsters Tours, EPAZ, Gallery of Guns, ICON Vehicle Dynamics, Illuminated Funds Group, LeBaron & Carroll Insurance, Nitro Gear & Axle, OdySea Aquarium Foundation, REI, ON Semiconductor, Salt River Project, State 48 Overland, Tru Flask, UniSource Energy Services, Victory 4X4, and Yamaha Outdoors.

Arizona Adventure Group March Hiking Challenge Benefitting Natural Restorations

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Arizona Adventure Group recently announced a 31 day Hiking Challenge for March 2021 and they are donating 10% of the proceeds to Natural Restorations!

Registration and all of the challenge details go live on Monday, 2/22/21.⁠⁠ For more details head over to their page: https://arizonaadventuregroup.com/pages/hiker-challenge⁠⁠
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Thank you to everyone at Arizona Adventure Group for your support of our mission!

1 Million Pounds Of Trash Removed!

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On 05/18/20, we hit a huge milestone! We have removed over 1 million pounds of trash from Arizona’s outdoor recreation & wilderness areas! It’s a bittersweet milestone because we wish all of that trash had never been dumped on public lands in the first place, but we are grateful we’ve been able to remove it and make a huge impact on Arizona!

We cannot wait until we can come together with everyone for a big celebration! This was not how we intended to announce and celebrate this huge milestone but we go with the flow and keep moving forward.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible! Huge shout out to our Dedicated Restoration Team, our volunteers, our Sponsors, and our Supporters!

2019 - Year End Review

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2019 was a busy year for Natural Restorations! Between our Dedicated Restoration Team Projects and our volunteer events, we removed 335,860 pounds of trash from outdoor recreation and wilderness areas across Arizona in 2019! That's 167.93 tons of trash no longer littering our beautiful state!

Here's the breakdown for our 2019 projects & events: 

Our veteran-based Dedicated Restoration Team removed 228,820 pounds of trash (114.41 tons), 174 tires, and 24,351 square feet of graffiti. 

Volunteers helped us remove 107,040 pounds of trash (53.52 tons) and 51 tires. 

Here are our overall totals since our first official cleanup in 2015:

We have removed 854,000 pounds of trash (427 tons) and removed and recycled 650 tires. 

Our Dedicated Restoration Team has removed 371,180 pounds of trash (185.59 tons) of trash since we launched the team in January 2017. Our Dedicated Restoration Team has also removed 31,575 square feet of graffiti from rocks and boulders across the state. 

Cloth & Flame Community Dinner & Donation

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In October 2019, we had the pleasure of being guests at an amazing community dinner benefitting Natural Restorations in the Superstition Mountains hosted by Cloth & Flame. Through this community dinner, Cloth & Flame donated $732.00 to our program!

The setting was perfect, the sunset magical, and it was such a treat to dine under the stars, chatting with friends, and meeting new people. And the food...we are still talking about how amazing the food was that night!

It was such a treat to be a part of this special evening! We would like to give a shout out to our friends at Visit Mesa for introducing Cloth & Flame to our organization!

If you aren’t familiar with Cloth & Flame, they host unique dinner experiences in unconventional spaces, primarily desert and wilderness locations. The bulk of their business is private & corporate events, and weddings. They also host community dinners at which they invite the public to join them at the table and experience a wonderful dinner amidst the natural beauty of our state. For their community dinners, they donate the proceeds to a local nonprofit that supports their mission of being stewards to the land.

Thanks again to everyone at Cloth & Flame for supporting our nonprofit organization and our mission! We hope to be able to offer supporters of Natural Restorations a chance to dine with Cloth & Flame again!⁠⠀

The following photo gallery is courtesy of Cloth & Flame and Elizabeth Nelson from Nelson Cinematic. We would also like to thank Noble Bread & Paul Joseph Waxman of Belly Phx for an amazing Welcome Cocktail made with Shurbwell.

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Exciting News! We are Wilderness First Responders!

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We have some exciting news! We were recently in Flagstaff getting our Wilderness First Responder (WFR) Certification through NOLS. This 10-day course is essential if you work or recreate in the outdoors or in other austere environments where access to medical care is delayed or communication is unreliable, which pretty much describes the areas we work in with our Dedicated Restoration Team and volunteers.

We would like to thank everyone at Salt River Project for awarding us with a capacity building grant earlier this year that made this wonderful opportunity to get our WFR certification possible! Thank you, SRP, for your continued support of Natural Restorations and our mission!

The NOLS WFR certification is an absolutely amazing program! We can't express how valuable and life changing the skills and knowledge we gained over the last 10 days are. At some point in our ives, we will come across someone who is injured and needs help, whether it is ourselves, a friend, family member, or a stranger. It's empowering to know that we have the knowledge and confidence needed to help save lives, diffuse extremely stressful situations and make better decisions on how to go about our daily routines.

I wish we could share more pictures from class, but we were sworn to secrecy and asked to keep the pictures from our night mock rescue off social media so that upcoming students get the same experience we had. This picture was taken right after Justin and I passed our written and practical exams.

This is not sponsored, NOLS did not give us a discount.

Natural Restorations Awarded Yamaha Outdoor Access Initiative Grant

Thank you to everyone at Yamaha Outdoor Access Initiative for awarding us with a grant to greatly improve our FJ Cruiser's capabilities as well as making some long overdue repairs. We run the FJ extremely hard in our mission to clean up outdoor recreation/OHV and wilderness areas across Arizona. Yamaha Outdoors really stepped up to help us continue to accomplish our goals and help guarantee responsible access to our Arizona trails for OHV use. ⁠Listen to the video to hear all of the details.

We also received partnership discounts from Icon Vehicle Dynamics, Metal Tech 4X4, and Sierra Expeditions to help us complete the FJ rebuild.

Thank you so much to everyone at Yamaha Outdoors, Icon Vehicle Dynamics, Metal Tech 4X4, and Sierra Expeditions for your support of this project and our mission! We would also like to thank Mike Pfab from RideNow Powersports in Chandler for writing a letter of endorsement for our Yamaha grant.⁠

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Extreme Terrain's Clean Trail Grant Program

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Check out this amazing opportunity through ExtremeTerrain.com's Clean Trail Grant Program that encourages the responsible recreational use of off-road trails. Get $250 for a trail improvement project!

More information about the grant can be found here: https://www.extremeterrain.com/clean-trail-initiative-program.html. Groups of 5 or more are welcome to apply! 

We recently applied for the Clean Trail Grant to fund the purchase of rakes for volunteers to use at our Doce Pit Cleanup in Prescott on Saturday, June 8th, 2019, our 3rd Annual Lower Sycamore OHV Area Cleanup on Saturday, October 19th, 2019 and at all future cleanups. Click HERE to register for upcoming events.

Don't miss out on this opportunity! More information about the grant can be found here: https://www.extremeterrain.com/clean-trail-initiative-program.html.