Summer 2008

Community Crew Update

With four crews working this summer, each with ten members, two crew leaders, and two apprentice leaders, Baltimore’s Community Crew program is off and running.

Crews are stationed at  Clyburn Arboretum Park, a 207-acre nature preserve in the heart of the city, Druid Hill Park*, Baltimore’s first large municipal park (and one of the oldest in the U.S.), and Gywnn Falls / Leakin Park. The 4th crew will work at several different parks over the summer.

*At Druid Hill, members will be rehabilitating trails on the Jones Falls Trailhead, replacing steps and curbing some of the eroded areas.  At the North end of Jones Falls Trail at Clipper Mill, the crew will be weeding gardens, removing English Ivy, and rehabbing a volunteer trail there (building waterbars, making step-stones, and more). In addition to all this, there is a great deal of general invasive species removal and mulching to be done around the park.

We have three environmental education days planned for the summer:

• City farm: We will be developing our exploration skills with lessons in map reading and tree identification, as well as learning natural sciences hands-on with activities in vegetable gardens, nature hikes and other activities. There will be an onsite picnic, too!
• Marshy Point: We will be exploring wetlands, meadows, marshes, and woodlands by foot, by canoe, or both! Typical sightings here include bald eagles and osprey, among other coastal wonders. Groups will be accommodated with naturalists for guides, and will cover topics of wetland and forest ecology, food webs, migration, and/or birding.
• Baltimore Harbor Program: The Baltimore Harbor Program focuses the Chesapeake Bay as a beautiful and productive ecosystem often stressed by a vital economic system. Using the Port of Baltimore, the Patapsco River and the main Bay itself as our classroom, we will explore the complex and fascinating interrelationships between the estuary and its most demanding users uses aboard Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 46' bay-built work boat the Snow Goose. On the boat we will engage in different activities such as food webs, oyster dredging, setting crab and eel pots, fishing, trawling, biological sampling, and chemical water quality tests.

Baltimore Zoo Grounds Clean Up

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