The ELC is situated on 212 acres of land located approximately three miles east of the main campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, on the banks of the Poudre River. It is managed through CSU's College of Natural Resources, with the staff comprised of mostly CSU students.
The mission of the ELC is "to advance environmental stewardship among students and the community through opportunities for experiential learning, self-study; and educational programs". Our task was to remove Tamarisk/ Salt Cedar from a designated plot of land on the east side of the Poudre River.
Our volunteer group was awesome. One of our volunteers, Bruce, was celebrating his 60th birthday, and for his birthday he asked all of his friends to do volunteer work with him. They were fun, energetic and much more motivated than we were to be pulling little trees out of the ground and painting herbicide on them. Every time they got a tree up from its roots they let out cheers of joy and moved onto the next one with excitement, even though the herbicide was eating through our latex gloves.
Our teaching assistant, who has over 10 years of trail work under his belt, volunteered to run the chainsaw for us. He cut down the Tamarisk clumps with a swiftness, grew weary of their small size and asked if there was anything bigger. I pointed to a Russian Olive, which is also an invasive species, and he set to work with his mini chainsaw cutting down a full size tree just for fun. In the end we had 5 massive piles of dead Tamarisk leaving the native trees happy with an increased water supply.
Our volunteer group was awesome. One of our volunteers, Bruce, was celebrating his 60th birthday, and for his birthday he asked all of his friends to do volunteer work with him. They were fun, energetic and much more motivated than we were to be pulling little trees out of the ground and painting herbicide on them. Every time they got a tree up from its roots they let out cheers of joy and moved onto the next one with excitement, even though the herbicide was eating through our latex gloves.
Our teaching assistant, who has over 10 years of trail work under his belt, volunteered to run the chainsaw for us. He cut down the Tamarisk clumps with a swiftness, grew weary of their small size and asked if there was anything bigger. I pointed to a Russian Olive, which is also an invasive species, and he set to work with his mini chainsaw cutting down a full size tree just for fun. In the end we had 5 massive piles of dead Tamarisk leaving the native trees happy with an increased water supply.
OUR GROUP
TRYING TO UPROOT
YEAH HERBICIDE AND HANDSAWS
LOPPING AWAY
THE ROOT OF TAMARISK
TEAMWORK
THE GROUP
THE GROUP
KATIE AND I
CROSSING THE RIVER
DAVE'S RUSSIAN OLIVE
ANDREW RUNNING THE SAW
ALIDA AND BEN ARE SERIOUS ABOUT TAMARISK REMOVAL
