Museum Volunteers for the Environment

MUVE is a volunteer-based habitat restoration group that uses community science, museum exhibits, outreach initiatives, and eco-art to engage with local residents and enhance our coastal environments. Volunteers leave behind a living legacy of native habitats that they can visit and enjoy in perpetuity. We invite you to join our efforts to restore and explore these coastal habitats for our coastal communities, plants and animals alike! Register for an event.

MUVE began as an eco-art initiative by local artist Xavier Cortada in 2006. Dubbed “The Reclamation Project” the initiative asked local volunteers to collect red mangrove propagules and exhibit them in plastic cups filled with water on the walls and windows of retail stores and schools. Sustained on what Mr. Cortada calls “life support,” these installations juxtaposed man-made commerce and concrete with elements of coastal habitats that thrived in Miami just decades ago. To complete the cycle of engagement, volunteers then planted these propagules on public lands overseen by Miami-Dade County. In 2007, Frost Science took the project to scale, exhibiting 1,110 propagules on a wall at its Wildlife Center in Coconut Grove. This installation and the scores of volunteers engaged in this eco-art initiative ultimately founded MUVE.

Since then, more than 13,000 volunteers have enhanced over 25 acres of mangrove forest, freshwater wetlands, beach dunes, and coastal hammock. This network of ecosystems provides shelter for native wildlife above and below the water line, stabilizes our shores, and protects our city from storms and sea level rise. These restored landscapes provide an incredible range of biodiversity benefits and promote human health and well-being. All thanks to our volunteers! Check out the links below to learn more about our initiatives and how you can get involved.