Sudbury Valley TrusteesConservation, Collaboration, and Community since 1953
REI grants $10,000 to support SVT's Conservation Steward Volunteer Program
With support from REI, SVT’s Conservation Steward Program had a very successful year. Thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who contributed their time! We had 235 youths and 208 adults contribute over 1,880 hours of their time to stewardship activities. Stewardship Volunteers learn new skills, become more engaged in conservation and help SVT to manage our natural areas.
We completed seven trail improvement projects, including new bridges and an interpretive trail, in addition to the regular trail maintenance at our 25 reservations that contain formal trails. Our Youth Conservation Stewards were heavily involved in trail improvements and maintenance; youths completed 6 individual leadership projects and 8 group community service projects. One of these projects was a boardwalk building and installation workshop with Sudbury Girl Scouts. The Girl Scout Troop subsequently adopted the trail at Brues Woods, in Sudbury, where they installed the boardwalk. Westborough Troop 100 Boy Scouts continued their sixth year of taking care of trails and general stewardship at the Walkup & Robinson Memorial Reservation, in Westborough.
Many volunteers assisted with invasive plant removal at several reservations, helping us to continue the habitat restoration of over 600 acres of natural lands. These volunteers worked at properties in Sudbury, Marlborough, Northborough, Southborough and Westborough.
Our Americorps Outreach Coordinator, Erin Snook, was very successful in recruiting and engaging conservation steward volunteers. One of her major projects was to facilitate the work of a new group, composed of both volunteers and professionals, to collaborate on land stewardship throughout the Sudbury, Assabet and Concord River watershed. The group is known as the West Suburban Conservation Council. In this latter effort, Erin involved 19 adult volunteers. Erin also coordinated a “Great Turtle Search” at the Desert Natural Area in Sudbury and Marlborough. In this effort, Erin recruited, trained, and involved over 100 volunteers who contributed over 250 hours to the turtle surveys.
Our Americorps Land Steward, Thai Ha-Ngoc, provided workshops for community land trust and conservation commission volunteers on how to prepare baseline documentation for their conservation lands. Successful participants went on to preparing documentation and monitoring reports on conservation lands.
Our fabulous crew of 42 volunteer property stewards continued to maintain trails and access, pick-up trash, conduct invasive species removal and serve as our ambassadors at SVT properties. The property stewards contributed almost 500 hours of volunteer time. One of our stewards is conducting a botanical inventory of two reservations with high ecological importance. Another steward is helping with our property database for maintaining visitation records and observations.
