Volunteer Spotlight, Cora Bercham
Blue Spring State Park
Cora Bercham moved to Florida from New York in 2014 to start working with Save the Manatee Club. Since a lot of her work is based at Blue Spring State Park, becoming a park volunteer naturally became the next step.
Born and raised in Germany, Cora always loved the outdoors and completed the Advanced Florida Master Naturalist Program upon moving to Florida. At Blue Spring State Park, Cora helps interpret information about the spring and manatees to park visitors throughout the year. In addition to her manatee research work during the winter months, she also established and co-leads the Manatee Observer Volunteer Program during the summer months to prevent harassment between swimmers and manatees and to provide education to park visitors from around the world.
Cora enjoys sharing her passion about manatees with visitors and has also organized several clean up events at the park to teach people about the problem of trash in the environment for all wildlife and to help park staff keeping the park clean. She also joined the Friends of Blue Spring Group and actively serves on their board. What makes Blue Spring so special to her is that it is busy year-round, meaning there is always something to do. Her favorite part of being able to volunteer at the park is the cool winter mornings when hundreds of manatees congregate in the warm water of the spring run.