Activity Report Explorer

Rio Grande Valley Broadband • Entered by Linda Starr on April 12, 2021

Shining River Open Space Stewardship Project

April 11, 2021

Key Issue: Public Lands Health & Protection
Activity Type: Stewardship (monitoring, sampling, planting, etc.)
Key Partners: 0

Measurable Outcomes

Outcome 1: Clean-up (4 Other)
Outcome 2: Other (14 trees)

Short Description of Activity

This has been part of an ongoing stewardship project with Albuquerque Open Space. The focus of this event was beaver fencing of young cottonwood trees recently planted by Open Space. Open Space provides wire and stakes and the trees are already planted. There are about 30 new trees to protect from beaver predators who like to munch on these trees. So, we fence the trees with chicken wire and some of us have been doing this long enough we can instruct newcomers. The other focus is always trash pickup under the Paseo del Norte bridge. Some of our volunteers are able to do this and not the beaver fencing for some reasons. The trash had accumulated quite a bit.

Reflection/Evaluation

The three trash picker-uppers found and bagged 4 bags of an array of trash, mostly plastics and styrofoam food containers. One found a $1 bill and a Smokey the Bear USFS pin – nice prizes. This was finished for this time out. There’s always more. The other eight of us did our best to bang in the stakes for the fences (two per tree) with a rock or a brick. Open Space forgot to bring hammers or mallets and we didn’t think to bring any (next time, we will). Then we circled around the stakes and trees with chicken wire about 4 feet tall and Susan O. and others helped with all the wire cutting in about 10-ft sections per tree. We completed 14 trees. Another event to finish the new trees will be planned for late May. The attendance was superlative and 7 of us joined for lunch following our work.