NEW YORK—On the Finger Lakes National Forest, it takes a community of land stewards to rebuild a community of pollinators in an ongoing battle against non-native invasive plants.

At Backbone Campground, Overlook Trailhead and the parking area at Caywood Point, this summer’s battle against invasives started last winter. Finger Lakes National Forest Staff started by working with the USDA NRCS Plant Materials Center in February. With a plan to remove non-native grasses and replace with native forb species and native warm season grasses, staff decided to plant plugs (individual seedlings started in their own small modules of soil) to give a head start to the newly established forbs and grasses. The Plant Materials Center provided their seed freezer to store seed, seed cooler to stratify seeds, greenhouse space to grow out the plugs and provided unmatched expertise in the Forest’s quest to promote native pollinator habitat.

With native plugs growing under the watchful eye of the Plant Materials Center, forest staff were able to remove a lot of the non-native grasses that were growing rampant. However, they knew they could use a few more supportive hands when it came time to planting native pollinator plugs.

For the past few summers, a CorpsTHAT crew has joined Forest Service staff on the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont to assist with field work and gain experience in land management. This year, the crew expanded their service to the Finger Lakes National Forest in New York to support the pollinator work funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

“The Finger Lakes National Forest is a small forest with a small staff,” says Greg Flood, Forest Service wildlife biologist. “But with support from GLRI, NRCS, and a great crew from CorpsTHAT, we were able to complete a project that may otherwise not have come to fruition.”

The crew was able to plant a variety of forb species: purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea), panicled-leaf ticktrefoil (Desmodium paniculatum), Maryland senna (Senna marilandica), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), lance-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), blue vervain (Verbena hastata), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and tall white beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) which are important nectar sources for pollinators. They also planted native warm season grasses including big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). These grasses are important for the life cycle of pollinators as they provide the ability to overwinter in the stems or in the leaf litter left by the plants. 

For the past four years, CorpsTHAT has recruited a crew of young adults to participate in conservation work in the outdoors. Thanks to a collaboration through the Forest Service Urban Connections program, this is the organization’s third year hosting a crew in the National Forest in Vermont. Crew members come from across the county and all of the members are deaf or hard of hearing community. Their mission is to connect the Deaf Community and the outdoors through education, recreation and careers.