Volunteers are needed for the annual Christmas Bird Count at the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, which is scheduled for Jan. 3, 2026. The event is part of the Audubon Society’s annual bird count across the Western Hemisphere.
Birders of all skill levels are welcome and encouraged to participate. The park also invites residents within this year’s count circle who have bird feeders at home to join the effort.
To participate in the count at Great Sand Dunes, individuals must register and be signed up as volunteers. Contact Park Biologist Dewane Mosher at Dewane_Mosher@nps.gov or 719-378- 6363. Please leave a message with the names of those in your survey party. Registered volunteers will receive a fee waiver for park entrance on the day of the count.
Volunteers must arrive at the visitor center by 7:45 a.m. on Jan. 3 to complete volunteer paperwork, review safety guidelines, and receive a map of their assigned area along with instructions for submitting count results.
The Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running citizen science survey in the world. Each year in late December, tens of thousands of volunteers across North America brave winter weather to contribute to more than a century of bird population data.
The CBC began in 1900 when 27 conservationists in 25 locations proposed an alternative to the “side hunt,” a Christmas Day tradition in which teams competed to shoot the most birds and small mammals. Instead, they chose to identify, count, and record birds — founding what is now considered the world’s most significant citizen-based conservation effort.
The CBC plays a vital role in monitoring the status of resident and migratory birds across the Western Hemisphere. The data, which are entirely volunteer-generated, have become a crucial part of the U.S. government’s natural history monitoring database.
For more information about the Christmas Bird Count, visit the Audubon website.
For questions about the count at Great Sand Dunes, contact Dewane Mosher at Dewane_Mosher@nps.gov or 719-378-6363.