To Celebrate Earth Week a Trails Work Day was held on Friday April 26 1-5PM 15 Students from the Rutgers Naturalist and the Rutgers Outdoors Clubs participated. We spread wood chip mulch made from a number of the Hurricane Sandy downed trees that were cleared from the trails back in January. Turning lemons into lemonade.
As recounted in my December 2012 posting, Hurricane Sandy blew over a number of large trees in the Kilmer Woods section of the EcoPreserve. However, no ill wind goes unstudied. In order to clear the trails of downed trees, we had to chainsaw a number of large red, white and black oak trunks. We recently went back to cut “cookies” from a several of these downed boles or stumps to be able to age the trees and fill in some…
With the help of RU Facilities, TreeTech and a dedicated crew of students, the SuperStorm Sandy damage to the EcoPreserve was finally cleared away. A number of blowdown trees were chainsawed to open up the EcoPreserve trail system. The students, several with chainsaw certification from summer jobs with the US Forest Service, were able to put their skills to good use. So get out there and enjoy the trails in this great wintry weather.
A joint clean-up event was on Saturday September 29 with participation of 2 dozen students from the RU Outdoors Club, the Naturalist Club, Principles of Natural Resource Management class and local homeowners through the Friends of the Rutgers EcoPreserve. The stream corridor to the east of the Ross Hall neighborhood was our target. We hauled out a ton of dumped trash – a lot of metal and glass was recycled. Other junk was trashed. Its amazing what you can do with many…