Over the past ten years, staff has worked to improve habitats in all areas of the parks.
by Tom Koritansky, Director of Park Operations
Lake Metroparks’ natural resource stewardship supports habitat and wildlife in many ways. Our work aims to keep natural areas healthy and attractive for wildlife by supporting and enhancing different vegetative communities from old fields and meadows to forests and even ponds and wetlands.
Over the past ten years, staff has worked to improve habitats in all areas of the parks. In many instances, the work has involved maintaining vegetation at different levels of ecological succession, or the orderly change of a plant community from field to forest. All of the old fields and meadows found throughout the parks occasionally need some sort of work done so that they don’t get overtaken by trees and shrubs. Mowing at regular intervals, prescribed burns and tillage are used to accomplish this task. Old fields and meadows are some of the most limited types of habitat in Lake County. Many organisms depend on these habitats to survive, so keeping these areas healthy and thriving is an important stewardship goal.
Natural Resources staff plant trees at Hidden Lake
While maintaining levels of succession is an important aspect of our stewardship practices, controlling invasive species has grown to be equally significant in maintaining quality habitats. An invasive species is an organism that is not native to a region and negatively alters the new environment it inhabits. Because these plants often do not have any natural controls that help to stifle their growth and reproduction, they tend to reproduce and grow rapidly, often overtaking and crowding out native plant communities. Controlling these invading plants is important when so many other organisms depend on the native plant community in order to survive. Our invasive plant control efforts are conducted in many types of habitats. Controlling invasive species in wetlands remains a priority since these habitats offer a tremendous amount of diversity in terms of the plants and animals that depend on them. Our work has expanded over the years to also control invasive species in old fields and forests as new and emerging invasive plants take hold. It’s a difficult job, but one that is vital to maintaining diverse communities and habitats.
Planting wildflower seeds at Lake Erie Bluffs
Lake Metroparks’ stewardship efforts also involve enhancing grounds and natural areas with varieties of trees, shrubs and other plants that help to beautify and augment the diversity of plants found throughout the many types of plant communities in the parks. Planting efforts range from planting a few sapling-sized trees along the edge of a trail to planting several hundred seedling trees in an attempt to forest an area. Our planting efforts are not just limited to trees either—in some instances developing a habitat with a rich variety of flowering shrubs like buttonbush and gray dogwood can really help to enhance a wetland community. Other times, plots of grassland plants like switchgrass and little bluestem can help provide cover to field-dwelling animals; plots rich in wildflowers provide a great resource for pollinating insects.
Natural Resources staff reclaim an old field overtaken by invasive shrubs