Each June Friends of the Rouge, in partnership with Rouge communities, brings volunteers together from across the watershed to work toward the common goal of improving the Rouge River for generations to come. This annual river clean up event, known as Rouge Rescue, began in 1986 with volunteers removing large quantities of trash from the river. As river sites improved public perception of the river shifted away from the thought that the river was just an open sewer and a place to dump trash. Today much of the event is focused on river restoration and volunteers work to remove invasive plants from the river corridor, install native plantings and stabilize stream banks to improve the health of the river.

Activities at many work sites involve managing the wood in the river using the Woody Debris Management 101 method to reduce stream bank erosion and create in-stream habitat.