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Help Oak Creek Watershed Council

Take action now and help us protect Oak Creek!
Do you have a love for Sedona and surrounding Arizona areas? Do you care about natural resources and preserving a quickly degrading and decreasing water source?

Then please help us do just that! Your support is crucial for our organization- and the future of Oak Creek, Sedona, AZ is bleak without us.


Can you imagine what Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona, and the integrity of Oak Creek would be after millions of visitors without someone advocating for a change and actively working to preserve one of Arizona's greatest treasures?

Have you visited Oak Creek and enjoyed the scenery and serenity of it all?  Want to ensure it stays that way for future generations to come? We need your help!!! 



Help us save Oak Creek and prevent this unique, precious resource from continuously being "Loved to Death" by donating to our Ambassador Program so we can continue hosting awesome volunteer cleanup events, public outreach, education, citizen science events, decades of invaluable insight and data, and the legacy of Oak Creek!!

Who we are: Oak Creek Watershed Council is an 501 (c)(3) environmental non-profit based out of Sedona, AZ, established in 2004, and created from the Oak Creek Canyon Task Force, a group of concerned citizens that banded together in 1994 to address water quality and cleanliness along Oak Creek. Our mission is to maintain a standard of excellence for watershed stewardship and preserve the integrity of Oak Creek. Each year, Red Rock Ranger District receives over 5 million visitors  visiting, recreating and spending time in or around Sedona. This creates a huge issue with the invaluable resource that is Oak Creek.

Oak Creek is a vital resource that is used for recreation, habitat, agriculture, industrial water, and drinking water. It flows into the Verde River, the Salt River, the Gila River, and eventually the Colorado River, all of which are used for drinking water, agricultural, and industrial purposes. From it's source all the way to the Pacific Ocean, Oak Creek is an outstanding and irreplaceable natural resource not only for enjoyment, but also for life. Imagine all of the environmental impacts such as trash, pollutants, fecal matter, etc. that are being introduced into Oak Creek from all of the visitors. Riparian areas make up of just 1% of the Southwest and have been receding and degrading in quality at an alarming rate. Oak Creek flows through Oak Creek Canyon and down through Sedona, which provides some of the most unique hiking and recreational experiences in the Southwest. Many locals and tourists alike come to the canyon and other areas of Sedona to enjoy the rare red rock features and the ability to hang by the creek. With all of these visitors, Oak Creek is truly "Loved to Death". 

The OCWC cleans up thousands of pounds of trash each year and since 2014 have removed a total of over 20,000 pounds of trash. Most of which can be prevented by public outreach and education.

Our Ambassador Program meets to mitigate all of these negative impacts that "being loved to death" creates for Oak Creek. We have our ambassadors on the ground hosting cleanup events, monitoring water quality, running citizen science events, and actively engaging both the community and visitors in educational events to promote Leave No Trace ethics.


The Problem:
 Across the nation funds are dwindling and being cut as more nonprofit entities merge, partner and compete for less and less funding every year. In order for us to continue to follow our mission, and keep Oak Creek and the surrounding areas a peaceful and healthy place to visit we need your help now more than ever! 


We need the community, stakeholders, those passionate for the environment, and anyone who has visited Sedona to come together and help make a change, and help keep this ever more popular resource clean and pristine for generations to come!

We are seeking $3,000 dollarsto continue to do good, hard, and very necessary work as summer is the busiest and biggest time of neglect for Oak Creek. With this money our ambassadors can continue to do the work that becomes more and more necessary each day while the OCWC continues to work towards receiving additional funding and building a more sustainable organizational model. Our goal is to receive enough funding to not only continue the ambassador program, but eventually hire even more passionate individuals with fresh new ideas so we can accomplish even more than we already have in our 24 years as an organization! Now more than ever you can help us accomplish our goals! Otherwise, OCWC may slowly disappear. Just imagine how much less enjoyable your experience in Northern Arizona would be if there was an extra 5,000 lbs of poop, trash, and recyclable materials in your favorite creek sites, campsites, local drainages, and businesses every year! Gross. 


Can you imagine what Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona, and the integrity of Oak Creek would be  without someone advocating for a change and actively working for preserving one of Arizona's greatest treasures?  Especially with more and more visitors coming to Sedona each year? 


Please help us keep mother nature sexy! (Click the video below)

Here are some of our accomplishments from 2017: 


Number of people talked to: 4,147
Hours of public education: 2,022
Total trash picked up: 3,599 lbs.
Recyclables sorted 1,391 lbs
Number of diapers: 105
Amount of feces removed: 186 lbs.
Public outreach events: 25
Volunteer events: 18
Number of volunteers: 360

Please help us surpass what we accomplished from 2017 by helping us meet our goal! The more funding, the more work we can do! 


Additional work we do!

Oak Creek Watershed Council Citizen Science Events- getting the community and youth involved with data collection that goes straight to helping Oak Creek! 

Please watch our video!

Thank you! You can have a huge impact on your favorite Southwestern vacation destination just by sharing!

Only you can help us keep Oak Creek and Sedona clean and beautiful!

Organizer

Kalai K.
Organizer
Sedona, AZ
Oak Creek Watershed Council
 
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.

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