Photo: Ann Marie Niziolek
Native Species Restoration
Photo: Ann Marie Niziolek
The Native Species Restoration Project at Crowell Hilaka is about improving the wildlife habitat at camp so that girls can observe and enjoy lots of different plants and animals that would naturally live here.
- It's OK to plant non-native flowers in the gardens
- It's OK to plant interesting tree specimens in many places
- It's OK sometime in the future to look at farming some types of plants as a
cash crop to help support the camp.
BUT - if we want to keep (or bring back!) all the different kinds of birds & butterflies, frogs & lighting bugs that live in this area, we have to make sure that we have plenty of the kinds of food plants that will support them. That almost always means the plants that have evolved here and adapted to this environment BEFORE people interfered.
The Parts of this Project:
REMOVING invasive species that are crowding out native plants.
IDENTIFYING the different kinds of native plants with their locations so that
girls can see them.
PLANTING native species in some selected areas.
EDUCATING girls (and their leaders and families) on what makes a healthy,
balanced ecosystem.
HELPING to maintain trails for girls to explore.
In nature, plants and animals get used to the place where they live. They get used to each other. Over many hundreds of years, and hundreds of generations, they even change to fit in better with the weather, the geology, and the other living things in their area. Changing to suit the surroundings is called “adapting”. The process of doing it is called “adaptation”.
Human beings like to change things to make life better for ourselves. We can make changes faster than nature can adapt. But nature keeps rolling along, no matter what we do. Sometimes we find out later that our changes affect nature in ways that cause problems for us.
Some examples:
Antibiotics kill germs that make us sick. But they can also kill good germs that help fight the bad germs. When too many good germs are gone, the bad germs can take over. Also, some germs have adapted to antibiotics, so the old antibiotics don’t work anymore.
Ships traveling back and forth across the ocean need to be heavy enough that they don’t tip over. If they don’t have enough to carry on one trip, they fill up with extra “ballast”. They used to use water from whatever lake they were starting in. Then, when they got across the ocean to their destination, they would their ballast water in a different lake before taking on heavy cargo. It made sense at the time. But most water is home to livng creatures. When ships from Europe released ballast water in Lake Erie, they also released baby zebra mussels. Zebra mussels have been gobbling up all the food in the lake so the creatures that were already living there didn’t have enough to eat. Even worse, there weren’t any fish in Lake Erie that liked to eat zebra mussels. So the zebra mussels kept growning and making more babies.
Science is a way of observing nature, observing the changes, and trying out ideas for nature and humans to live in harmony. Research is going on now to work on new ways to fight disease, to deal with the zebra mussel problem, to study and counteract global warming – and more. It’s an exciting time to be a scientist! But eveyone all over the world can make observations about nature, share the information, learn about the issues, and work to reverse problems. Even kids can help – the planet belongs to all of us.
Plants make their own food from sunlight and water. Animals can’t do that. They have to either eat plants or eat other animals. If they eat plants, they need to eat a lot just to keep going. If they eat animals, they need to spend time and energy hunting. Are there enough animals around to feed the hunters? There are if you count insects.
In Northeast Ohio, the animals who depend on insects (either directly, or by eating animals who eat insects) include: Dragonflies, frogs, most fish, ALL BIRDS.
Insects are by far the largest source of animal protein in the natural world. Even birds who thrive mainly on seeds and berries during most of the year require insect protein when laying eggs and to feed their young. If it wasn’t for insects we would have no birds. If we want a healthy population of birds to live in ( not just visit) our backyards and in our camp, we need to have insects. And if we are going to have insects, we need to grow the plants the insect larvae depend on for food.
Many insect larvae can only eat certain kinds of leaves. If they are placed on another kind of leaf – they simply won’t recognize it as food. If they can’t crawl away, they will starve rather than eat a kind of leaf that is not “theirs”.
There can be no butterflies without caterpillars; there can be no caterpillar without the right food plants for them. Probably the most well-known example is the Monarch butterfly. Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed. Nothing else.
*This information is adapted from the excellent book "Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants" by Douglas Tallamy, updated in 2009.
Invasion of the Plant Monsters
Where humans plant gardens, they often bring in non-native plants. They might not help support the native ecology – but they aren’t in themselves bad guys. But there are some types of plants that go crazy when they are moved out of their native region. If they are established somewhere where there are no insect eaters to slow them down, they soon take over. They can invade even the land set aside to be a nature preserve. So they are called “Invasives” or “Invasive species”.
The plants that belong in the area provide food for the insects, so their growth is slowed. But since invasives don't have insects to slow them down, they can spend all their energy growing. They can quickly become larger than the native plants. They block the sunlight, grab the water and nutrients from the ground , and so crowd out the native plants.
Some of the worst invasives at Crowell Hilaka are:
Buckthorn and Multiflora Rose – both of which were brought to this region on purpose because they grew fast and people thought they would make good hedges. Unfortunately, they got out of hand and are growning throughout the camp.
Barberry is another problem. Garden stores sell a lot because people like to plant it in their yards. It has pretty leaves in fall, it gets red berries in the winter that look nice for Christmas, and insects that live here won’t eat the leaves. Birds like to eat the berries and carry them along when they fly. When they poop them out, not only are the seeds in a new location, they’ve been supplied with a nice dose of fertilizer to help them get started!
Garlic Mustard is a problem in Summit County. Garlic mustard smells like garlic, and it tastes good in salads. That's why it was brought here in the first place. But nothing around here eats it. Even deer leave it alone! I haven’t seen much in camp. But it’s just a matter of time.
Honeysuckle, privet, and phragmites are all growing in camp and choking out the plants that belong here.
Photo: Ann Marie Niziolik
We will never get rid of all the invasives. But we can keep them from choking favorite areas. And we can re-plant native plants and keep them weeded until they are large enough to hold out against competing invasives.
In September 2009, with the permission of the GSNEO Board of Directors, FoCH selected the Pine Lake Trail as the first area to concentrate on for invasives removal. The first part of the trail is one of the real beauty spots at camp. The trail passes under a high canopy of beech & pine branches alongside the creek above Lake Linnea. Where the creek empties into the lake, the trail was choked with buckthorn. After the turnoff up to the Paddler unit, the underbrush was literally impenetrable.
We felt that the trail should be restored so that girls could enjoy hiking all the way around the lake. In terms of environmental impact, the lakeshore is a fertile spot to promote new growth. Transitional areas (the edges between field and forest, the bank between lake and land) have many different kinds of plants and animals.
The process of identifying the old trail and then making it passable took the entire 2010 growing season. Buckthorn was the biggest problem. A lot of time was spent cutting buckthorn bushes and dragging them away. We also moved logs out of the way to make the trail easier to walk. The job is still not complete, as there are still a couple of logs that hikers must clamber over. Also, many thick poison ivy vines alongside the trail were cut. Although poison ivy is a native species, program outranked enviromental purity on what we hope will become a major hiking trail as well as a spot for evironmental education.
The great news is that there were many species of natives growing in the shadow of the buckthorn. Stunted, but still there! Now that much of the buckthorn is gone, the natives will be able to grow up, insects will be able to eat them, and wildlife throughout the camp will be stronger!