To get an early jump on Earth Week and Arbor Day, student volunteers from the RU Outdoors Club and Ecology department came out to plant trees in the RU EcoPreserve. Bare root sapling “whips” of flowering dogwood, black gum and persimmon were planted in several gaps opened up by Superstorm Sandy back in 2012. Since then the gaps have been invaded by a thick ground cover of stiltgrass and mutliflora rose. The students removed some of the competing vegetation and…
The 2017 trail counter data for the Kontos Kiosk entrance to the EcoPreserve (near the Avenue E Roundabout, across from the RU Business School) documents the high use of the EcoPreserve. Taking just the Outbound (Exiting the Preserve) data nearly 6300 pedestrians and bikers were recorded. The peak months were April and October, each with over 900 folks counted. Comparing these data to the Green Trail (see prior post), this trailhead receives a lot more use during the summer with…
Was perusing the most recent download of trail usage numbers for the EcoPreserve Green Trail entrance on Avenue E across from the Livingston Quads. The usage numbers track the Rutgers University campus calendar quite closely: upwards of 300 people weekly during the fall, brief dip during Thanksgiving break, then a longer dip during winter break and then back up again in spring before a prolonged dip during the summer months. The peak usage was 384 people during the week of…
X-country skiing in the EcoPreserve this past weekend, I came across scores of holes dug by gray squirrels down through the snow-cover to the leaf litter to recover acorns and nuts buried this past autumn. I also came across this little evidence of squirrelly frustration. Seems that a gray squirrel had buried a hickory nut in anticipation of digging it up for a mid-winter snack. Unfortunately, the nut froze solid into the ground and the squirrel tried in vain to…