<div class="ck-content"><p> I moved to Chapel Hill from Chicago in September 2018. I'd been removing invasive buckthorn back in Chicago since 2012, and quickly realized that there was no shortage of new invasives to satisfy my obsession in North Carolina.</p><p>For a couple of years, I mostly did "guerrilla" tree rescues. I'd see an area with big trees under serious threat of invasives, and I'd head on in and cut the invasives. At that time, I was not painting with herbicide, had a “purist” objection to using them (wow, do I feel bad about that now). In any case, at one point I did a tally and found that I'd cut invasives in almost 50 different locations.</p><p>But it was stressful (I was trespassing, after all), and limited in impact (no herbicide, so lots of regrowth; no work in large preserves). Then in 2019, two fantastic things happened. First, I met Tim Logue at Pritchard Park (Chapel Hill Public Library). He was holding monthly workdays at the park to remove invasives. I joined in and soon decided to tackle the tangled disaster of invasives along the creek near Estes. And Tim introduced me to Garlon 3A, an herbicide "powered" by triclopyr. From that point on, I almost never cut invasives unless I can also paint the stumps with herbicide. A big step for me.</p><p>The second thing that happened, later that same year, was that I noticed that Town of Chapel Hill had an <a href="https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/parks/adopt-a-park-greenway">"adopt a greenway" program</a>. It was oriented towards organizations, but I figured what the heck, let's see if an individual can adopt a greenway, too. So I submitted my application for Morgan Creek Greenway - and it was accepted! I met with Kevin Robinson, Senior Manager of Parks and Planning Operations, and a UNC student in Circle K (Kiwanis' youth organization) to discuss my plans.</p><p>I immediately started removing privet at Morgan Creek and a couple months later, we started group events with Circle K. From that point, well, I/we never looked back. Today, I work in, and lead volunteers in, close to a dozen parks, preserves and municipal properties, most importantly Brumley South of Triangle Land Conservancy. I have learned from and strategize with at least a half dozen other similar invasive obsessives. And I try to take a photographic record of every event we hold.</p><p>Which brings me back to a look back at 2023. I thought I'd go through my Triangle Rewilding drive to count up the events I had photos of. In 2022, that came to a total of 59 events. not bad. Just about one a week, almost half of which were in Brumley. Of course, this is far from the total of volunteer-powered activity in our area. But it's what I was aware of.</p><p>Then I totaled up activity for 2023. Amazingly, I found before-and-after pictures for <strong>109 tree rescues that I was involved in</strong>. Almost double the 2022 count! Sometimes it was just me, sometimes it was a group of 25 or 30 volunteers; regardless of the number, every single time we saved native species. Yet now that I was in touch with so many others, I knew my work was just a small part of the total. So I reached out to my friends to get a more accurate count of what volunteers in our area did in 2023 to combat invasives and held native species survive. Well. Check out the list below.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1xPM6zkD-oYEzA3VawjoPL1JyMzgNrCc_" alt="REPLACE" width="300" height="400"></div><p>That's still <i>for sure</i> <strong>not</strong> everything that volunteers accomplished in 2023, but, wow! Almost 300 times that volunteers left the comfort and safety of their homes and entered the natural world, with one goal in mind: to save our native flora and fauna from the onslaught of invasives.</p><p>And yet…there's still so much more to do. Which brings me to the fundamental truth of our situation:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-big" style="color:hsl(0,0%,0%);"><strong>The only way to save our native species from extinction is to use volunteers, LOTS of volunteers.</strong></span></p></blockquote><p>Governments will never have enough staff or budget to do the job on their own. Sure, there are things <i>only</i> professionals can handle (taking down very large trees, working in isolated areas, tackling vast acreages completely overrun by invasives like fig buttercup and stilt grass, and so on). But they will never be able to keep up, or get ahead. That is why I am so very, deeply thankful to organizations like <a href="https://triangleland.org">TLC</a> and <a href="https://ellerbecreek.org">ECWA</a> and towns like Chapel Hill, which have welcomed volunteers with open arms. </p><p>Here some highlights from our efforts in the Triangle:</p><ul><li>UNC students came through big-time. In particular, eco-conscious members of Alpha Phi Omega dedicated themselves to healing <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iY2YRni60LjniFEXc4vIaYGjU1vs5Fql">Community Center Park</a>, and Epsilon Eta came out in strength to tackle the truly awful, dense understory of privet along <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ICZGDd8ib-EYbIwxmzV0cje_65Nd7hkf">Battle Branch Trail</a>. Definitely, my favorite tree rescues of 2023 were those with these students!</li><li>First ever <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10XzVyTmwat56Hc0mQChWuyNi8113ARO2">Great Stilt Grass Pull Day</a> at Brumley, with 30 volunteers (half of them kids) clearing out a big area of stilt grass. We'll return next year and clear this area again, using it as a “test bed” for how effectively we can make a dent in this ultra-invasive invasive.</li><li>The Hillsborough Riverwalk crew, led by Tim Logue, smashed it with 39 Wednesday volunteer workdays on the Riverwalk, with a total of 292 hours put in by volunteers. After spending most of 2022 clearing the north bank of the Eno between the pedestrian bridge near WSM and the Churton St. bridge, they cleared a comparable area on the south bank this year. They also planted 627 native plants in areas previously cleared. Incredible!</li><li>Joe Magura started up a monthly tree rescue at 17-Acre Wood Preserve in Durham in 2023. Under ECWA auspices, he held 12 events, with an average of 14 volunteers per event, and a total of 420 volunteer hours. Go, Joe!</li><li>Dale Morgan picked up where Tim left off when he retired from the library, and organized <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">11 volunteer workdays in </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uajuPqaNk47Qys0Oa3uk1BySFPEIZS5Y"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pritchard Park</span></a><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in 2023 with a total of 167 volunteers for 417.5 hours. Volunteers also planted a whole lot of native trees down by the creek, which has been completely transformed by their work!</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is so much more I could tell you, but I think this is probably long enough for one email. If, however, you'd like to be even <i>more</i> inspired, check out this</span> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C0gw2aME19OvHf2UHHQm2a3Z2m9cHCcV/view?usp=drive_link">slideshow of volunteers</a> hard at work healing our planet in 2023!</p><p> </p></div> |