Twenty-three workdays were held this past season. Volunteers worked at clearing two different sites on the upper Kinni — upstream of the DNR handicap fishing pier parking lot on River Drive and upstream and downstream of the DNR parking lot on Hwy 65 just downstream from Liberty Road.
At the River Drive site, we cleared box elder, honeysuckle, and some monster old-growth buckthorn, with trunks on some trees exceeding ten inches in diameter. One-quarter mile of stream bank was cleared on both sides over a span of of 16 workdays, which included one mid-week workday with the third-grade class from Greenwood Elementary in River Falls, their instructors, and a dozen parent chaperones joining in to help drag and stack tree-cut limbs onto a huge bonfire. Former DNR wildlife biologist Marty Engel joined us for this event and took the students streamside to teach them a little bit about entemology by showing them some of the aquatic bugs living in the stream.
The final seven workdays this season were spent clearing out a tangle of dead downed trees along with box elder, buckthorn, and a thicket of silver maple saplings which were growing far too close together.
Between the two sites, nearly 1,600 hours of volunteer time was recorded. Not counting the Greenwood event, 66 volunteers participated in the work, and 34 of those individuals attended workdays more than once. Eight volunteers are deserving of special recognition for attending multiple work days: John Skelton, 22 days; Jim Tatzel, 21; Dave Gregg, 16, Tom Anderson, 15; Trish Hannah, 11; Steve Cox, 10; Dave Kozlovsk,y 10; and Paul Mahler, 6.
The DNR no longer has a budget for doing maintenance work on the multiple miles of easements existing on streams within our chapter area. I would like to say that we are making a dent, but the fact is that brush and buckthorn are growing faster than we are able to control it. I do wish that more members of the chapter would turn out for workdays to help out with this cause.
This season, I had as few as three volunteers turn out for one workday and as many as 18 on two occasions. In years past, I can recall workdays with over 30 volunteers. I hope that more of you will make it a point to turn out to help with maintenance work during the 2022–2023 winter season.
Nate and his crew will be restoring a section of the lower Trimbelle at the Halvorson easement this summer. You can probably expect to see an announcement for 2–3 seeding/mulching volunteer opportunities there. In addition, I will post for the usual volunteers to help Kasey and her crew with their stream shocking survey work on larger waters like the Rush, Kinni, Willow, EauGalle, and Trimbelle.
Pheasants Forever has signed on to assume maintenance on the South Fork of the Kinni. Grant funding enabled their volunteers to cut the massive stands of sand bar willows which had taken over many areas there. They also cut a lot of box elder trees and did herbicide treatment on all of the cut stumps to prevent further growth.
