Event Invitation
SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 at 1:00 pm
If you are looking around your calendar and see a blank spot on Saturday, at 1 PM, and you are around Fayetteville, you would be most welcome to join a few (probably VERY few) folks in helping to clear a path/trail in the oak barren habitat at
Wilson Springs
. It's been a great birding place in past years BUT it is currently an unworkable mess. Joe Woolbright and a contractor are going to mow out walking trails Saturday morning. On Saturday starting 1 PM, Joe and his son Alex are going to fire up their saws and start reducing the ice storm damage in the woodland habitat (with big prairie mounds, the Arkansas Darter spring run, etc). What's needed is help to move the brush once it's cut up by Joe & Alex. It will be hard, hot, sweaty, and can you imagine why you actually agreed to help? BUT, we need the help. You need boots and leather gloves. Also, if you want more info about this opportunity, call Joe at 479-427-4277 or me 479-521-1858, or, BEST, just meet us out there. Any help, any duration, very welcome.
-- JOSEPH C. NEAL in Fayetteville, Arkansas
Event Results
Nine volunteers armed with chainsaws, lopers, leather gloves, and a willingness to sweat and bleed PLUS a hardy tractor and brush hog from Siloam Springs PLUS Joe Woolbright and his Ozark Ecological Restoration Inc plus determination, OPENED some fine birding (and multiple use) trails through the now sadly overgrown former seasonally wet prairie fields at Wilson Springs in Fayetteville.
We also cleared a birdable trail through the ice storm damaged wooded bottomlands alongside Wilson Spring with its Arkansas Darters.
As a result of this, visitors can get around the whole place, top to bottom, see the spring, and fully bird the typically birdy seasonal wetlands. The entire place still needs additional removal of invasive callorie pears (and many other invasives that have gained ground because of 5+ years of no management except for last winters callorie pear removal) and acomplete, hot, prescribed burn to favor the many native Tallgrass Prairie plants that are being smoothered.
BUT, for the first time in several years, there are real trails that provide extensive access and hopefully much more is to come. One volunteer said it would be easy to generate a google type trails map by simply walking around the whole place, which would be a big help to those unfamiliar with the site.
Wilson Springs was identified as a priority grassland landscape in our Fayetteville green infrastructure project. We are hoping that money from a recently awarded state wildlife grant to Audubon Arkansas that includes Wilson Springs will result in positive on-the-ground habitat quality gains in the near term.
-- JOSEPH C. NEAL in Fayetteville, Arkansas