Kid Lake Meadow Restoration
Restoration Director (Chris) and Volunteer Coordinator (Kalyn) were joined by volunteers to aid in restoration efforts in Kid Lake Meadows. The group pulled over 50lbs of the noxious weed, St. John’s Wort, established 2 new Standard Impact Monitoring Protocol (SIMP) plots, and surveyed the newly established SIMP plots.
These SIMP plots will be surveyed every year to monitor for:
Noxious weed populations (and the effectiveness of treatment)
Biocontrol populations that keep those weeds in check
Monitoring biological control agents is an essential component of a successful biological control program. Capturing this data helps us accurately document the impact of this weed management practice. SIMP is a nationally recognized platform that has been adopted to capture data and perform analysis on biocontrol release sites. The data captured is used to document vegetation cover, weed density, and biological control agent abundance. This type of monitoring allows us to track trends in both of these populations, which will help us to determine how effective different treatments are over time.
Heart Lake Trail Improvement
Stewardship Coordinator, Joelle, was joined by volunteers to assist the USFS trail crew with trail improvements on the well used trail 171! A bulk of the work was centered around re-directing a portion of the trail in order to mitigate tree root damage. Volunteers worked hard to clear the new section of trail.
