WILLISTOWN CONSERVATION TRUST

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Help Us Meet the Challenge!

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Are you a friend of the Trust but have never donated or have you supported the Trust in the past but never the Annual Fund?

This fall you have the opportunity to make a big impact with your first gift to the Annual Fund! We are pleased to announce that each new donor’s gift will be matched dollar for dollar by the Tally Foundation up to $30,000.  

Your donation of any amount will go directly to supporting the Trust’s holistic approach to conservation. Every day our Land Protection, Stewardship, Community Farm, Bird Conservation, and Watershed Protection staff work tirelessly to conserve our land, inspire our community, and restore our local habitats for people and wildlife.

The Trust is grateful for our supporters of the Annual Fund, which provides much needed funding to support our important work.

Join our community of supporters with a gift by November 30!

The Tally Foundation, named after a family’s beloved golden retriever Tally Ho.

Nature at Night: Flappy Hour, Using Motus to Track the Flight Path of an Avian Biologist

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Meet Shelly Eshleman, our newest Motus team member and bird conservation biologist as she describes her path to working for Willistown Conservation Trust. She will give an inside view of what life as a Motus technician is like and describe the Bobolink project she’s been working on with Zoe Warner.

Recent Article by Zoë Warner | Article published by Brandywine Conservancy

PRESERVED LANDS IN KING RANCH AREA OF CHESTER COUNTY OFFER HOPE AND SUMMER HOME FOR BOBOLINKS
By: Zoë Warner, Ph.D., Avian Research

Trails Workshops (Part 1 & 2)

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Do you love trails? We do! Willistown Conservation Trust is offering virtual trails workshops! Hosted by Andrew Kirkpatrick, Director of Stewardship and Mike Cranney, Preserve Manager, they’ll be discussing trail planning, construction, and maintenance. Learn more about materials, tools, and demonstrations of techniques like bog bridge construction, turnpikes, grade reversals and how to handle wet spots on trails. 

This workshop is funded in part by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Pennsylvania Recreational Trails Program funded through the Federal Highway Administration. 

Trails Workshop: Part 1 | Trail Materials

Trails Workshop: Part 1 | Trail Tools

Trails Workshop: Part 2 | Turnpike

Trails Workshop: Part 2 | Bog Bridges

Videos created by Sophia Gross, Communications & Marketing Intern.

Mapping the Ashbridge Tree Planting

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The most important part of a tree planting usually comes after the trees are in the ground.  Recently planted trees can not be left unattended or else they will be out-competed by invasive plants or eaten by deer. Consistent tree maintenance is crucial to the survival of a young tree until it can get established in its new environment. For a tree planting in a rural setting, like the recent planting at Ashbridge Lake, maintenance includes weeding, mowing, pruning, and replacing tree tubes to keep deer from damaging the trees. Performing all of this maintenance on a tree planting with close to 1,000 trees can get complicated. Fortunately, we can use technology like a geographic information system (GIS) to help us organize tree maintenance and keep track of every tree on a site. 

Over this past summer the Watershed Protection Team did exactly that. Using software from ArcGIS, our team mapped every tree that was planted over the last two years at the Ashbridge Lake site in Ashbridge Preserve. That is a total of 691 trees with a few hundred more set to be planted sometime in 2021. We collected the latitude and longitude of every tree and recorded the species, size, health, and date each tree was planted. We also recorded the last time each tree was maintained.  All of this data was compiled and each tree was represented with a point to create the maps shown below.

  • Trees planted at Ashbridge Lake on both banks of Ridley Creek and along the Ridley Creek Loop trail. Each color represents one of the 29 different species planted. 
  • The health of each tree was broken down into four different categories.

In addition to creating a visualization of all of the trees planted along Ridley Creek these maps create a database of information on all of our trees. Keeping track of when each tree was last maintained will help us create a streamlined maintenance system. Data on health helps us monitor the success of the tree planting and look for any unresolved problems in the planting site like areas with poor soil or frequent flooding. Measuring the size of each tree will allow us to look at growth rates to see which species are best suited for our site. All of this information is very valuable when planning for the next stage of planting at this site or for scoping out other sites that need to be reforested. 

The goal of the tree planting at Ashbridge Lake is to restore the riparian buffer along the creek which will provide habitat and food for native wildlife while improving the water quality of the stream. To achieve these goals it is necessary that as many trees as possible reach full maturity. Creating a tree map to help organize a maintenance plan and collect detailed information on each tree is one tool we can use to assure our tree planting reaches its fullest potential as soon as possible. 

This tree planting was made possible by generous funding provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and TreeVitalize. See below for the full interactive map and list of species.

View larger map

EVAN HUNT joined the team as a Conservation Associate in January. Evan Hunt is a native of southeastern Pennsylvania and graduated from Ursinus College in 2018 with a BA in Environmental Studies. Since then, he has worked on a number of riparian buffer restoration projects and become well-versed in native plant identification.

Legacy of the Land: A History of Land Conservation in Willistown

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Trust’s Executive Director and co-founder Bonnie Van Alen, co-founder Alice Hausmann, and Director of Land Protection Erik Hetzel, discuss the history of land protection in our region. Bonnie, Alice, and Erik explore the history of our land and early days of conservation, including the founding of Willistown Conservation Trust. You will also learn more about conservation easements that have helped lead to the protection of more than 7,500 acres in the Willistown region, and ways you can contribute to land conservation in your own backyard.