It has been 10 years since Director of Land Stewardship, Linda Rohleder, first started the Invasive Strike Force (ISF) and there are so many wonderful program accomplishments and volunteers to celebrate in that time! The first training sessions were held in May 2011 in the tiny meeting room / lunch room at the old Trail Conference office (see photo above). Our goal for that first year was to map 100 miles of trail. At the time, we had a very small grant of a few thousand dollars to start off the program, no staff, no seasonal crew, no tools, and no database to put the incoming data into. We’ve come a very long way since then, and you've been a part of that journey! In our 2011 inaugural season we exceeded our goals. We trained more than 100 volunteers, mapped about 163 miles of trail, had 2 ISF crew workdays removing burning bush at Norvin Green State Forest in N.J., and we created our first database. Many of our volunteers that year were drawn from the list of Trail Conference Trail Maintainers, but some had previously participated in a four-year study with Rutgers University and the Trail Conference that ran from 2006-2009 which was the genesis of our current program. Linda decided to take look back through our volunteer list from that first year to see who is still participating in the Invasives Strike Force. Dependable volunteers who help out year after year are critical to keeping our programs going. Congratulations to Keith Mulvihill, Jason Li, Elaine Silverstein, and Bruce Thaler for being some of our longest serving ISF volunteers. Some volunteers who began as ISF trail surveyors in 2011 have moved into other Stewardship programs: Chuck and Viviana Holmes have continued to serve as A.T. Natural Heritage Monitoring volunteers, Georgette Weir has completed Blockbuster survey assignments in recent years and many more of those pioneer ISF volunteers are still involved with the Trail Conference in some capacity. Although they haven’t reached the 10-year mark, there are several additional volunteers who began in 2012 that are still actively surveying today: Joanne Beliveau, Phyllis Ianniello, Martha Rabson, and Greg Smith. Thank you for your dedication and the tremendous amount of observations you’ve contributed over the years! With community members as dedicated to protecting natural areas as our ISF volunteers, we will be going strong for another 10 years and far beyond! |