host posted on February 25, 2010 13:04
The city this week is wrapping up an extensive oak savanna restoration at Turville Point that in some areas dramatically thinned brush and small trees in wooded Olin-Turville Park.
Work on the South Side park on Lake Monona began in January, said Russ Hefty, conservation resource supervisor for the Parks Division. Clearing sight lines to cut down on the clandestine sexual encounters common in the secluded, 65-acre conservancy was a police priority, Hefty said, but the main goal was to restore native species.
“That not only makes it desirable for a wider variety of animals and insects, but it also makes it a much more interesting place for human visitors,” Hefty said.
The thinning, which could be finished by Friday, was done in three phases using forestry mowing, a cost-effective method for controlling invasive brush first used at Turville and two other city parks in 2006.
Forestry mowers look like the small Bobcat loaders commonly seen removing snow from sidewalks or parking lots. Instead of wheels, the mowers have two rubber tracks, which make less impact on the ground. They are designed to mow and chip brush and take out trees that are less than six inches in diameter.
Forestry mowing is a cost-effective, proven method for controlling thick, invasive brush, said Greg Hamilton, a Madison-based biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wisconsin Private Lands Office, which contributed $10,000 to the Turville Point project.
The mowing will be followed in late April or early May with a controlled burn, which has been used at Turville Point in the past numerous times. After most of the wood chips are burned, park staff and volunteers will plant native grass, sedge and forb. In some areas, they’ll plant native shrubs to provide food and cover for wildlife.
“It’s getting us back to that conservation, the origins of that property,” said Parks Superintendent Kevin Briski. “I think it’s really significant.”
In November Madison police proposed aggressively removing the brush, aiming to prevent the public, and therefore illegal, sexual activity.
What police saw as problematic was also unattractive to Hefty: a thicket of buckthorn and honeysuckle, two invasive plants that threaten native wildflowers.
Even before the police request, the city had budgeted $30,000 for the restoration.
“So in this case, both our needs coincided,” Hefty said.
The Turville Point restoration caught Hamilton’s eye last fall during a hike there with his kids, and he added money to the project through his office.
“Olin-Turville is important because it functions as critical wildlife habitat on a highly developed lake,” he said. “It has a diverse plant and animal community, which has been improved by the city of Madison Parks Division with all the hard effort they’ve put in over the last decade.”