BRATTLEBORO — The Friends of the West River Trail (FWRT) are launching a new volunteer opportunity called "Adopt an Acre."
A 26-acre parcel of land the trail runs through, called the Riverstone Preserve, includes an interpretive trail, called the Sibosen Trail. FWRT owns this property on which they have a conservation easement with the Vermont Land Trust.
In their Land Management Plan, FWRT pledged to mitigate and control the invasive plants on this property. For several years, with the help of grant funds from the National Resources Conservation Service, FWRT hired Long View Forest to professionally treat the invasives while, during its monthly volunteer work days, FWRT also manually pulled seedlings that continued to emerge.
Much of the 26 acres continues to need professional treatment, but there are six one-acre parcels that can be managed manually, and FWRT seeks teams (families or groups of friends or individuals) to adopt the parcels. They estimate each parcel may take the equivalent of 8 to 16 hours per season (depending on how many people are sharing the work).
If you are interested in "Adopting an Acre," contact the FWRT Steering Committee at lowersection@westrivertrail.org. They will provide training on identifying invasives and how to use a phone app to find parcel boundaries and participants' locations on their parcels in real time.
This Town and Village item was submitted to The Commons.