| <div class="ck-content"><p>This is my last newsletter of 2024. It's been quite the year. I'll send out a look-back at the year from an (my) invasives perspective in January. For now, I offer this “long read” about work volunteers did in Rocky Creek Park, Durham this December. </p><p>I hope everyone reading this newsletter is able to look forward to 2025 with some optimism and eagerness to heal the planet. The challenges have not decreased, but the energy and commitment of volunteers is definitely ramping up to meet those challenges!</p><h3><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);">Picking up the invasive removal pace in Durham</span></h3><p>Twenty volunteers responded to Keep Durham Beautiful's call to help heal Durham parks. Today our focus was Rocky Creek Park, and in particular the thick growth of invasives along the creek. </p><p>One team stayed on the park-side of the creek and tackled a band of thorny olive that had grown densely at the top of the bank. They worked hard and moved a lot further down the creek than we expected to accomplish in our two hours.</p><p>The other team crossed the creek into a very messy situation. Dozens of very large glossy privets were the main invasive feature, a number of them 25 feet tall and thick enough at the base to need a Katanaboy or chainsaw to take them down. There was also one massive horned holly. </p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=17CSPykIpKSojplvBtsfytXETtj0a2RQB&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>So several high school students decided they wanted to cut down really big stuff. They - and others - killed all the invasives growing under the trees (and where they would fell). </p><p>At one point a volunteer had climbed into a “thorny olive cave” right next to the creek, and ended let them know who was boss.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1d1sVO5nr83CUXv48w1KNXYUllY7Qhl0g&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Given the size of these invasives, we got an amazing amount of work done!</p><p>Back in the park itself, Megan led a half dozen volunteers to a thick wall of thorny olive that had taken root right at the edge of the creek bank.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1fu9S4XRsKQxzlUT2EU21C49GM8X8tA7M&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Thorny olive will send long branches out to grab hold of trees and then climb right up, engulfing the entire tree. Or if there is nothing tall nearby, multiple plants will all get tangled up with each other. Getting to the base of a plant to cut and kill it is one, hard enough thing. But then pulling it out? A big job.</p><p>Which they were up to. Here's a view of that same stretch of olive, but from the other side of the creek.(so in the picture above, the tall glossy privet on the right is the tree that's left standing below, on the left). Look how clear it is!</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1ygcO-4R4ARIDQvEMCmZ5FDDcL6z4fX81&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><h4>Monday at Rocky Creek Park</h4><p>We continued our healing of Rocky Creek Park on a chilly December Monday. 30 degrees at 10 AM but that didn't deter our dozen enthusiastic volunteers. We handed out gloves and glasses and loppers and saws. What we <i>didn't </i>hand out was the herbicide; it was actually too cold for the poison to be effective.</p><p>Instead, we shifted strategies: rather than cutting the invasives down to ground level and then applying the herbicide, we cut high (a foot or so above ground). This way, for sure we will have removed the invasives from the canopy, allowing in light and also ending new berry/seed production from the trees. And then we can come back later in 2025, and do the ground-level cut and paint for the final goodbye.</p><p>On Sunday, we spent lots of time by the creek (both sides), going after some gnarly tangles of thorny olive and big glossy privets. Today, we focused on two stands of glossy privet that were up against the fence line between the park and its neighbors. The results were spectacular. Here's one before-after to give a sense….</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1XdyeBZy875hMQaclHnu1w4j3eKGncz__&sz=w800" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Looking back, I am really impressed at how the volunteers self-organized and sorted things out. I stayed mostly with the group near Elizabeth Street. I've gotta think they were a bit intimidated when faced with the challenge of taking down pretty much everything green in this picture:</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1YQsYGZav8E8AkADloaGBnpWMAvNXmqaE&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>I gave some very general advice, such as:</p><ul><li>Take down the smaller trees, before you tackle the really big ones. </li><li>Grab the cut tree by its base and pull it out (privets are good at untangling themselves).</li><li>Try not to break any branches of the hackberries and other small natives trapped within the privets.</li></ul><p>and off they went. This meant that they had to more than just cut. They had to <i>plan out</i> the steps they would take to take down the privets. It was fun to watch them sort it all out.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1fhOHDiaO4JA_Tr4az18tBGGCwdoadYvz&sz=w400-h600" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>There were some really big privets, so the Katanaboy 500 came in really handy. Lou took right to that big saw and got the efficient cutting rhythm going in no time…</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1_4SMXYIWhmSJPTkE-WZnruYUa2f-O_J-&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Further in, Julie led a group to plow through the second stand. Another remarkable transformation!</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1HfR99__Te7vTjipRmx8FJa9zm-8ghotP&sz=w800" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>We left behind two massive piles of dead privet. These will be habitats for small mammals, birds and others who need protection from larger predators. </p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1cwkw923C9GiaJv_ucnnjPb5f6qHt6XHe&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Or maybe the town will remove them. Either way, Rocky Creek Park is a much healthier park after those two days of hard work by our wonderful volunteers, serving as a reminder:</p><ul><li>of the big impact we can have in a short amount of time.</li><li>that it doesn't require lots of training or specialized gear. You show up, you make a difference.</li><li>we're not just helping our non-0human neighbors, we're helping ourselves. </li></ul><h3>So much to dislike about billionaires</h3><p>There's so much we <i>could</i> like about them - if they showed more wisdom and less hubris. Billionaires could use their wealth to purchase remaining natural spaces and make them off-limits to development. They could apply political pressure to end the obscene subsidies for fossil fuel companies. They could give me $10 million to create a super-ultra-fantastic network of planet healers. Instead….</p><p><strong>Apex the $45M stegosaurus is on display in New York. </strong></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);">The museum also confirmed the identity of the philanthropist who purchased Apex. Billionaire hedge fund manager and longtime museum donor Ken Griffin bought it at an </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/stegosaurus-dinosaur-auction-sothebys-3b47fffdcc3f7c139d192d70169ba737"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);"><u>auction in July</u></span></a><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);"> for $45 million, the most ever paid for dinosaur remains. </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-travel-education-museums-american-museum-of-natural-history-693c6a3d6772bac236d6fb799b1cdf4b"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);"><u>Sean Decatur</u></span></a><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);">, president of the American Museum of Natural History, said that Griffin approved a long-term loan of Apex, as well as allowing scientists to take samples from the fossil for analysis.</span></p></blockquote><p>The very idea that fossils like “Apex” (how ridiculous all by itself) would be <i>owned</i> privately and <i>loaned </i>to museums and scientists is just downright repulsive.</p><p>But wait a minute, that ends this newsletter on a negative note. No, no, Steven. That will not do. Instead I offer this lovely tiny (just an inch or so in length) newt that a veteran planet healer, Libby, noticed on Buckeye Loop on the way to kill more autumn olive:</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1OMmmUdM7O7KSph29TzohyrwrTOvIH6XL&sz=w400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Dear, lovely Eastern North American newt: we do it all for you and your non-human friends! </p></div><div class="ck-content"><h3>Receive all my reports on tree rescues</h3><p>If you'd like to get some good news about restoring native habitats delivered straight to your brain upwards of a few times a week, sign in to <a href="https://rewildearth.net">Rewild Earth</a>, click on your name in top right, then My profile. Under Communication Preferences, switch “Send reports of all events” to ON. </p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1BeynVqu8taOGrsvi56u0mmDKuNJko22h&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE" width="358" height="138"></div><h3>Resources you might find useful</h3><ul><li><a href="https://shop.naisma.org/collections/buckthorn-blaster">Buckthorn Blasters</a>: safe, easy herbicide delivery system from the North American Invasive Species Management Association. Don't start cutting without them!</li><li><a href="https://nc-ipc.weebly.com/nc-invasive-plants.html">NC Invasive Plants list</a>: recently updated by NC-IPC, the NC Invasives Plants Council.</li><li><a href="https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/AG259">Overview of different herbicides</a>: glyposphate, triclopyr and others - which should you use?</li><li>Volunteer for <a href="https://triangleland.org">Triangle Land Conservancy</a>: the biggest land conservancy group in our area. </li><li>Volunteer for <a href="https://ellerbecreek.org">Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association</a> (Durham): a wonderful group working hard to maintain contiguous natural areas along Ellerbe Creek.</li></ul></div> |