Woodlands Management Committee Meeting Minutes

June 20, 2007

Attendees: Jerry Uhrig, Cliff Miles, Linda Spencer-Green, and Richard Uranker

Guests: Rick Miles, Josh Bingham

Administrative

Minutes from the previous meeting are on the website.

Status Reports

Deer exclosures: Hay-scented fern

It turns out that hay-scented fern is a good indicator species for deer browse. Deer do not eat it and they do eat most of its competitors. So in areas with heavy deer browse, this fern tends to dominate. Such is the case at the site of the deer exclosure. There are large areas of this fern both inside and outside the exclosure. Jerry suggested to David Fewell that the High School Environmental Club could undertake a project to selectively thin the fern inside and outside the exclosure and monitor recovery. Mr. Fewell agreed that this would make a good project and that it could be started this fall. Cliff agreed to do an inventory inside the exclosure to provide a baseline for the study.

Topics for discussion:

· Invasives removal projects

During the two hours of invasive work on Saturday, June 16 in Halsey Frederick Park, Cliff and Rick Miles and Jerry nearly finished off the area between the tennis courts and the playfields. Next Saturday, Josh Bingham plans to have a group of about 15 working from this area on down into the Park. Josh will have the group work for three hours.

Plans for the remainder of the summer are to work at the sled run in July primarily cutting and applying herbicide to barberry. Then in August we will work at Birchwood primarily on Japanese knotweed.

Other topics:

a) Linda's last meeting because she is moving to Boston

b) Gypsy moth spraying - not needed in this area

c) Richard investigated ways of getting more people involved in the invasives control work and made two recommendations. First, contact the Middle School science teacher. She is planning to include material on invasives in her curriculum in the coming year. This would be a good opportunity to foster an awareness of invasive species in town. Second, it may be possible to use some of the time that juveniles are assigned by the Juvenile Advisory Board. Currently, the time is often spent on housekeeping tasks such as washing police cars. We need to speak to Gary Webb and Chief Tovo about this. Jerry agreed to pursue these possibilities.