declanmccabe's Journal

Hi folks

We recently cleared the fallen box elder from the SMC trail near the Woodside end of the property. Part of the fallen tree was placed in the herd path that had formed around the obstacle to encourage use of the main trail.

A pile of wood chips was placed near the entrance and a few buckets. Feel free to load up a bucket or two with wood chips and dump them on a soggy part of the trail or on any trail location where foot traffic is wearing down to bare soil.

Our goal is to find a balance between enough traffic to keep the trail open without brush hogging, and not so much traffic as to cause erosion. We hope to do additional trail work over summer and particularly to clear the heavy tree trunk that fell closer to the cornfield.

Happy iNaturalizing

Declan

It's hard to call a piece of ground "new" in any real sense, and now that the Saint Michael's College Natural Area has been up and running for more than a year, I suppose it's not exactly a new natural area. But there are some new aspects of the site worth discussing:

1. Last year, 2018, was the last year of fodder corn planting on about 65 acres. We are gradually shifting from that model to a more natural use of the land.
2. After adding a single mapped and marked trail last summer, naturalists of many stripes have discovered our site. As of May 20 2019, 150 bird species have been recorded on eBird and we have exceeded 400 observations on iNaturalist. And Shirley (@sdz456) even discovered a winter-fruiting fungus on site that is a Vermont record.
3. We posted the entire property against hunting and trapping; despite this effort, three hunters were arrested and charged with criminal trespass and illegal possession of a deer based on photographic evidence provided by Saint Michael's College researchers.
4. We have planted more than 150 trees thanks to donations from Branch Out Burlington and trees provided by the folks in the Intervale.

I believe we are well on our way to establishing a truly interesting Natural Area that will serve the community well in years to come.

Cheers

Declan