Sat, Apr 24 2004 - Antietam Watershed Buffer Planting (View Original Event Details)
Event Organizer(s): |  |
Jesse Allen
|
Participants: |  | Jesse Allen, Jesse Swain, Martha Stauss, Jared Dant, Jeff La Noue, Kevin Littrell |
|  |
Write Up:Most of the tree planters met on time at the
Frederick Towne Mall, although foggy conditions
on
the road getting there did provide some
challenges
to the drive. After introducing ourselves to each
other, we all piled in together in Jared's car and
headed out to the location at Quincy,
Pennsylvania, just north of
Waynesboro.
We arrived on time at the location only to find that
overachievers who had arrived early were
already moving the 450 trees from the barn where
they had been dropped off down to spots on the
side of the West Branch of Antietnam Creek to get
them ready for planting. Once we arrived, we
signed in and introduced ourselves to Marcy
Damon, the host of the event with the
Chesapeake
Bay Foundation (CBF), and connected up with
Kelly and Martha who had driven straight to the
site rather than coming through the carpool. Kelly
turned out to have had the lazy option: her
parents live in Waynesboro and since she was
visiting for the weekend already, it was a ten-
minute drive to
the location. Those of us who had
a two-hour drive were quite envious!
Once signed in with the CBF, we joined the tree
crews taking green ash, silky dogwoods, and a
variety of other native trees down to the banks of
stream. By the time all the trees had been taken
down to the stream, and a few of us admired a
pair of fighting or mating groundhogs, (We city
types were unsure which it was. One groundhog
lay still for some time pretending to be dead until
Jeff announced it was dead, at which time it got
up
and ran up the streambed just to prove him
wrong. Groundhogs are spiteful.) Marcy and the
other CBF organizers gathered everyone together
for introductions and to explain the work we were
to do.
There were about 90 volunteers all told,
many of them local members of the Antietnam
Stream Coalition. Several others were high
school student doing school biology or service
projects. The CBF staff explained that
Washington County in Pennsylvania where we
were has the second-highest levels of agricultural
runoff in the state, and the adjacent county in
Maryland through which the Antietnam Creek
runs is the second heaviest agricultural runoff
county in Maryland. So considerable agricultural
nutrients run off this area, particularly into
Antietnam Creek and thus into the Potomac and
the Chesapeake Bay. But trees in riparian areas
(along the sides of streams) can intercept this
runoff and remove the nutrients, as well as
providing shade on the streams, which keeps the
stream water cooler, which in turn increases its
ability to hold dissolved oxygen, which is critical to
fish and the small insect larva on which they feed.
The trees also reduce erosion and sedimentation
in the streams, which means there are more stony
spots where insect larvae can hatch and more for
native brook trout and other fish to feed on. Thus
restoring trees to the banks of the streams has a
number of beneficial effects to help improve the
general health of the Bay and the streams that
feed
into it.
The farmer, Mr. Hess, on whose land we were
working, explained that the foundation provides
the trees, potted and raised at the Claggett Farm
CBF site in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, as well as
free fencing for the farmers to keep their cattle
from wandering into the stream areas where they
would otherwise chop up the ground and pollute
the water with their dung. He and his neighbor
are looking forward to having a new forest grow at
the edge of their land in return for pulling in their
stock from the stream, though it is their children
and grandchildren whom will reap the rewards of
the work done today.
We then got instructions on how to plant the trees,
and set off with shovels to put them all into their
new homes in the ground. A couple of the trees
had grown into their wire
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