A small team is planting more than 300 trees at Mitchell Memorial Forest. It's an effort to turn former grassland back into its original forested state, and connect fragmented areas of the park property beyond the developed sections.
"It gives us a lot of diversity and contiguous corridors for wildlife," Gregor Bundy, conservation and parks manager, tells WVXU. "The goal here is to reforest and draw together some of this habitat. Right now, it's pretty fragmented. A lot of this used to be former hay fields, agricultural fields, and it's surrounded by forest that's been here for, in some cases, hundreds of years. We're trying to make that less fragmented."
The trees are being planted across eight acres, mainly to the southeast of the developed areas of the park. While 300 trees may sound like a lot, Bundy says there will still be some meadows.
"A lot of wildlife needs a continuous habitat, and some prefer those habitat edges — areas that go from meadow or grassland to forest. Those edges are valuable spaces for a lot of birds, butterflies, things like that. By drawing together some of these fragmented areas, we're able to give them that continuous space. But also, by design and the way that we're planting, we're leaving some grassland and open meadow to give a diversity of habitat for the diversity of species that live out here," he says.
The project is part of Great Parks' master plan which lists "building ecological resiliency and sustainability" as a key priority. The planting is funded by a $73,000 grant from the Clean Ohio Fund.
Tree species being planted include various types of oaks, Ohio buckeye, persimmon, redbud, tulip, hickory and more. They range in root ball size from seven to 15 gallons. Once they're all planted, exclusion fencing will be added around each tree to deter deer from eating the tender leaves.
Some trees will grow faster than others, but it will take a while for the new forest to flourish.
"We're planting some redbuds and persimmons; those can be growing up and getting closer to mature age in as little as five years," Bundy says. "It really depends on the species, but it can be anything from a five year to a 20 year range on how long until they reach kind of that mature looking stage."
Bundy says there's the possibility of adding additional trails through the reforested areas, but that's a ways down the road.
For now, species like bobcat and a variety of birds are on Bundy's wish list.
"We do have bobcats here. We've had sightings throughout our park on our mountain bike trail. Bobcats especially love that kind of contiguous forest habitat, and those edges are prime areas for a lot of different bird species to thrive in."
And maybe even the occasional escaped emu, Bundy laughs, noting the tree planting area is next to the farm from which an emu recently escaped. Park employees spotted "Eddie" last week wandering the mountain bike trails after escaping over the weekend.
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