Our crews are BUSY - ISF surveyors are BUSY - WE'RE busy...it must be summer! Above, Catskill Trail Steward, Brandon, gets a taste for invasives removal.

Left/Above: The Catskill Trail Stewards enjoy the "view" on one of their training hikes.
Right/Below: The Hudson Valley Trail Stewards get on-site training near the Croton Aqueduct trail.

The 2022 Conservation Corps Trail Stewards are ready to ROCK and roll! On our Hudson Valley crew, we have Trail Stewards Andrew, Declan, Charlene, and Ryan, led by Trail Steward Crew Leader Tiff. On our Catskill crew, we have Trail Stewards Josh, Amanda, Brandon, and Liam, led by Trail Steward Crew Leader Chiara (seen above).

After receiving site-specific training for the locations they’ll be working in, the stewards have also gained training in trail maintenance, native and invasive species identification, invasive species spread prevention messaging, Wilderness First Aid with CPR/AED, and Leave No Trace Principles!

Over the month of July, in addition to their regular stewarding duties, the Hudson Valley stewards will be working with the ISF crew at Iona Island and Three Arrows in Putnam Valley, NY, tackling invasive species such as cutleaf blackberry, Chinese bushclover, Japanese angelica tree, and Japanese spiraea. The Catskill stewards have already partnered with our ISF crew to battle Japanese spiraea (seen below), and will be working on some trail improvement projects in Platte Clove Preserve, as well as the Huckleberry Point trail in the Kaaterskill Wild Forest.

Our Terrestrial Invasives Strike Force Crew and Catskill Trail Stewards joined forces for a removal workday led by Scenic Hudson.

In partnership with Scenic Hudson, our Invasives Strike Force crew and Catskill Trail Stewards worked side-by-side removing invasive Japanese spiraea in Ulster County. This collaborative workday allowed the Stewards to expand their knowledge of invasive species while gaining hands-on experience in the removal process. It’s also an opportunity for the crews to spend quality time together while being extremely productive - two crews is always better than one! We thank Scenic Hudson for their guidance during this excursion, and to our hardworking crews who pick-mattocked their way through a veritable jungle of Japanese spiraea!

Rockland Conservation and Service Corps member Patrick Fitzgerald and the Trail Conference’s Associate Director of Stewardship, Brent Boscarino, investigate a tree of heaven for signs of spotted lanternfly. Pictured to the right (or below if viewed on a mobile device) is a look at spotted lanternfly nymphs on a young tree of heaven that our team discovered this June in Sloatsburg, N.Y.

A huge thank you to all the volunteers who have stepped up to help with finding and mapping the Invasives Strike Force’s 5 priority species this year: spotted lanternfly, tree of heaven, beech leaf disease, jumping worm and Japanese spiraea! We are now over 100 surveyors who have completed both required training sessions and have received a survey assignment. In addition to our live-streamed training attendance numbers, our on demand training videos have received approximately 600 views on our YouTube channel – we are over 10,000 views on our YouTube educational videos so far in 2022! 

The exciting part about this year’s survey season is that the data is being used to drive our management priorities in real time. For example, the beech leaf disease survey data is being utilized to establish 3 year monitoring plots throughout the Lower Hudson PRISM region in the hopes of establishing baseline mortality rates, discovering potential disease-resistant trees and determining what environmental factors are most highly correlated with the disease (e.g., jumping worms, soil conditions, beech bark disease severity, among many others) (see photo below for a look at some of our PRISM partners, staff and volunteers looking UP! training for how to establish these plots!). Similarly, we are also using spotted lanternfly (SLF) and tree of heaven survey data to help determine where to set up SLF circle traps to help with removal efforts of the pest in our region. As of the end of June, our Stewardship team and volunteers have helped to set up approximately 100 traps across 7 townships and general park locations in the lower Hudson (Scarsdale, Kakiat/Harriman, Orangeburg, Newburgh, Sloatsburg, Armonk and Sterling Forest).  

Great work so far everyone! We will have a lot more updates in the coming weeks.  

Above, our Invasives Strike Force partnered with REI for a Habitat Helpers workday at NY-NJ Trail Conference Headquarters. Together they pulled enough garlic mustard to fill NINE trash bags!

We are very grateful for all the volunteer help in our native gardens here at the Trail Conference! A hearty thanks to volunteer leaders Terry Cohn, Carole Baligh, Elaine Silverstein and Joe Motisi for stepping up to lead these workdays.

So far, over 30 volunteers have come out for the season, dedicating more than 80 hours to removing oriental bittersweet, pulling Japanese stiltgrass, mugwort and garlic mustard and generally cleaning up the front welcome area and the beautiful fern garden.

The next step will be focused on trimming back some of the more aggressive native species to allow for a more diverse pollinator habitat. Sign up to help if you can!

Japanese spiraea, or Spiraea japonica, is also known as Japanese meadowsweet and Korean spiraea, and is native to Japan, China and Korea. It is an emerging invasive species in the Lower Hudson region of New York with a few populations located across the state. 

Japanese spiraea is a:

• Perennial, deciduous shrub
• Grows to a height of 4-6 feet
• Prefers wetter soil and full sun, though can tolerate partial shade.

To identify Japanese spiraea, be on the lookout for its eye-catching, rosy-pink flowers in broad clusters at the end of long, alternate-leafed stems. The stem itself is woody, slender and reddish brown, and sometimes hairy, while the leaves are oval-shaped with a toothy edge and are about 1-3 inches in size. 

This shrub grows in an upright, low and broadly mounded form, creating a dense thicket of thin wiry stems. This species is especially threatening because it can invade a variety of habitats from wet, riparian areas, to forests, and even fields

So be on the lookout for Japanese spiraea this month next time you are out and about walking your dog, on your favorite hike or having a picnic. And please don't forget to post to iNaturalist! We need help reporting this sneaky invader!