In the Venturing program, there are several major awards that one can earn. The one that we focus on the most is Ranger, the high-adventure, outdoor-focused award, and one of the requirements for it is to plan, organize, and carry out a significant conservation project. As part of my journey towards Ranger, I worked with Ethan from the State Parks resource team at Half Moon Bay State Beach to do this project. We worked together to set up the logistics for the project (organizing time & date, setting a workday schedule, and getting mulch & tools to the worksite). I organized a group of crew youth and adults (as well as non-crew youth and adults) to prepare and bring cardboard to the project.
My conservation project was to continue what Callie started and sheet mulch the rest of the open area (couple hundred square feet) as well as weeding some of the invasive species in the area. The goal of this project was to help protect the native plants in the area, to remove and prevent the growth of invasive species. In the future, people will revisit the area to plant more native plants in the area, but the mulch protects the native plants currently in the area by maintaining more nutrients in the soil.
Due to the work that Callie had already done in clearing the area, we were able to get to mulching right away: laying down cardboard and piling six inches of mulch over it. I lead the volunteers to form teams that efficiently and effectively did each task. In three hours, we were able to mulch over all the cardboard we had. After that, smaller teams worked on weeding other areas and removing dead plants. We were then able to mulch over another neighboring area (without cardboard) as well.
Overall, it was a great experience. The rangers overseeing the project were very impressed with our work and were asking us to come back again to help! While the larger project still isn’t finished, we were able to make a lot of progress on it in the four hours we worked with twenty-one workers and were only limited by the resources we had to continue mulching. It was a great way to escape into the outdoors and really make an impact somewhere that needs it. I can’t wait to see the entire area be finished after another conservation project!
By Jared