As part of the “United We Serve” campaign, I had the opportunity on Thursday to volunteer alongside a team of enthusiastic AmeriCorps volunteers and staff in our Division of Parks and Recreation.
We were assigned to remove a nonnative, invasive plant called the Autumn olive from a wooded area at the Robeson Creek canoe access in the Jordan Lake Recreation Area between Raleigh and Pittsboro.
Not long after I arrived, Emily Hill, the division’s Piedmont biologist, handed me a lopper and a handsaw and explained that the Autumn olive was introduced as an ornamental plant from Asia to provide food for wildlife, but that it now threatens the forest’s biodiversity as it outcompetes other native plants for food and sunlight.
I didn’t have to look for the large plant, which has a large number of elliptical-shaped leaves and a back side with a silvery white shine. Autumn olive is so dense along the gravel access road it obscures many of the young hardwoods and other species.
We got right to work and it didn’t take long for any of us to break a sweat. I was extremely impressed by the hard work of everyone involved, especially the volunteers with AmeriCorps. There was Veronika Lopez, 20, from California, Jeannie Lee, 23, from down the road in Goldsboro, Ned Scavuzzo-Duggan, 19, from Rhode Island, Jared Brown, 25, from Michigan and the team’s leader Joareyn Hill, 21, from Wisconsin.
I learned from chatting with the team members from AmeriCorps that they were “roughing” it, camping every night at the recreation area. Prior to arriving at Jordan Lake, they spent time rebuilding Louisiana communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and rebuilding a battered women’s shelter damaged by fire in western North Carolina. All were spending a year volunteering as a way to travel and do their part for public service. After finishing their work at Jordan Lake State Recreation Area this week, they will head for more volunteer work at Morrow Mountain State Park in Albemarle and then to Pilot Mountain State Park near Mt. Airy.
I am genuinely inspired by their devotion to public service.
