“Zach Pociask, ’16, is a German-Writing double major. This piece was written for WR 301: Writing about Science (SP2015) taught by Dr. Terre Ryan, Assistant Professor of Writing at Loyola University Maryland. In this course, Zach read and wrote extensively on issues like environmental protection and public transportation.
Photo by Taylor Rogers, ’15
On Saturday, April 11th of this year, I participated in helping to clean up the woods and the stream that are at the edge of the Loyola University Maryland’s campus next to Gardens Housing. The event lasted from 9:00am until 12:00pm and was entirely accomplished by volunteer work. I’ll admit that while walking over to the work area in the morning, I was a little irritated that I had to be up at a time when I’m normally still sleeping on Saturday mornings. However, once I began helping to remove invasive vine species that had started to wrap around some of the trees and collect garbage that had been decaying in the woods for what could have been years, my mood rapidly improved, and I remembered why I love landscaping so much.
Chemistry Professor Elizabeth Dahl led the group for the morning and was responsible for reporting the results of our work back to Blue Water Baltimore and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. Both are non-profit organizations dedicated to keeping the ecosystem of the Baltimore area clean and protected from pollution as well as invasive species. On top of advocating for stronger waterway and environmental protection laws, they work with volunteers to remove both man-made waste and invasive plants and organisms from forests, waterways, and shorelines, working with local communities to ensure these places stay clean and healthy. Garbage that remains in any ecosystem is liable to leach into our drinking and agriculture water, on top of poisoning native species of plants and animals. Plastics and metals, when not properly disposed of or recycled, break down and release toxins into our ecosystems that can build up and drastically harm local species, including us humans.[i] We only worked for a few hours, but the work we did helped to clean up an area of the forest near Loyola that desperately needed attention. Even the smallest amounts of work go a long way in keeping nature healthy.
Photos by Taylor Rogers, ’15
While many students were over by the stream removing trash that had been tossed into the water, several others and I were working closer to campus, removing vines of English Ivy. Professor Dahl explained that this vine was brought to the United States by European immigrants and planted in private gardens, but easily made its way into and took over many forests in the Northwest and South. Many parts of our country are threatened by invasive plants and insects, which when introduced to a new ecosystem can completely undermine its stability and cause local species to become endangered or extinct. It is vital that we remove, or at the very least contain, these species in order to ensure that our regional ecosystems are healthy and sustainable.[ii] This invasive vine had wrapped around several trees from the ground up, the trees’ own bark barely visible. We all made sure to not only remove the English Ivy from the trees, but to remove as much of their roots as possible form the ground. Doing this for each tree took at least ten minutes, but eliminating an invasive plant down to its roots is incredibly important to insure that the work lasts, and not undermined weeks later when any roots left in the ground might spawn a new plant. It was reassuring to see that everyone was taking this task seriously. The trees and patches of the woods we cleared looked much better than they had before, with the native trees appearing ‘cleansed’ from the invasive vines. Hopefully the English Ivy won’t return.
Removing these invasive plants is just as important as cleaning trash out of rivers and streams. When invasive species are introduced into an ecosystem, they can easily take over and kick out all native plants growing in the area. Our work was necessary in order to make sure that the species that should be in our area are in fact surviving. On top of that, when native species thrive in the region they can naturally survive in, the result is a more visually pleasing landscape.
[i] Blue Water Baltimore. “Trash.” 2015. Web. 22 April 2015. http://www.bluewaterbaltimore.org/learn/threats-to-water-quality/trash/
[ii] National Wildlife Federation. “What We Do to Stop Invasive Species” National Wildlife. 2015. Web. 22 April 2015 http://www.nwf.org/what-we-do/protect-wildlife/invasive-species.aspx
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