Volunteer in the outdoors

Plenty of organisations would love to have your help. Perhaps you can spare an hour fortnightly or maybe you’d like to spend a week on a working holiday.

You could join a local group – or even start one – to improve greenspace and paths close to home. Or travel to some of Scotland’s wildest places to maintain and repair trails and work on projects to enhance habitats for wildlife.

Learn more about how to volunteer with NatureScot.

You can search for conservation and gardening opportunities on the Volunteer Scotland website. Or, have a look at our list of organisations that offer environmental volunteering opportunities in Scotland.

Make Your Mark

NatureScot is proud of to be a part of Make Your Mark an inclusive volunteering campaign, which aims to increase the number and diversity of heritage volunteers in Scotland.

For volunteers, Make Your Mark is a volunteering portal that will connect you with organisations that care for Scotland’s places, nature, history and culture. By volunteering, you can discover Scotland's stories, care for local places, take action for climate and nature, connect with likeminded people, learn new skills, network with staff and get behind-the-scenes access.

For Scottish heritage organisations, Make Your Mark supports volunteer-involving heritage organisations in Scotland by:

• Connecting volunteer organisers across Scotland to a peer-to-peer support network
• Sharing resources about inclusive volunteer management via their website and e-newsletter
• Hosting events about inclusive volunteer management
• Collating and promote volunteering opportunities on their online portal
• Evidencing the impact of volunteering to seek more support and funding for heritage volunteer programmes.

Find out more

Scotland's National Nature Reserves - visiting and volunteering for each reserve

Publications:

• Gaelic welcome to volunteers
• Beinn Eighe NNR volunteer information
• NatureScot Volunteers Handbook