In late October, Missouri Conservation Corps completed our second annual volunteer workday in the town of Arrow Rock. Volunteer teams assembled in the parking lot at the Visitor Center and were organized to cut and remove invasive privet on the trails of Arrow Rock State Historic Site, and along the creek that winds through a picturesque valley in this historic village in central Missouri. Missouri Conservation Corps Project Director Stephen Bybee gave a brief presentation on the importance of invasive species removal, and on the history of the environment being impacted in Arrow Rock.
This year our privet removal effort focused on the hill above the creek and the Santa Fe spring. Our volunteers organized themselves into teams and took turns cutting privet and hauling cut brush down the hill to a pile by the road. Our teams slowly worked up the hill to the top, marveling at the size and age of some of the native trees that we uncovered as the privet was removed, including stately old cedars and gnarly, weathered hackberry trees.
Special thanks goes out to the volunteers who came out to work with us in Arrow Rock this year, including staff and volunteers for Missouri River Bird Observatory, volunteers and members of Missouri Conservation Corps, and the dedicated members of the Columbia chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, a national group that was significantly involved in the preservation of historic Arrow Rock! A big thank you also goes to the staff members at Arrow Rock Historic Site, who have helped us organize and plan our volunteer workdays in Arrow Rock. Our group looks forward to future habitat work in Arrow Rock with Missouri River Bird Observatory and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Missouri Conservation Corps will be organizing and hosting three more volunteer workdays back in Columbia until mid-December, and we encourage you to come out and join us in one of our honeysuckle removal workdays in Columbia’s parks before we take a much-needed winter break.
