The Region of Waterloo provided a Cummunity Environmental Grant to the Branchton Village Land Trust for the year 2021. A grant of $2,260 wasprovided for forestry and botanical work in the Branchton Forest.
The first phase involved remedial forestry work, largely to lay down dangerous trees. This first phase worth $1000 plus HST was conducted by MartinForestry on May 27, 2021. This work consisted of the laying down of 25 broken and leaning trees throughout the forest. In all cases the cut trees are left torot in the forest. Also numerous Common Buckthorn trees were cut down. This is an invasive, non-native small tree.
The work noted about 20 large dead ashes that have been killed by the Emerald Ash beetle infestation. Many will fall down on their own; but some maybecome hung up. These will be watched carefully, and we expect we may need financial help to deal with those dead trees in future years.
The second half of the work involved physical removal of Garlic Mustard plants from the woods. This was worth $1000 plus HST. This work was doneduring the last week of May and the first week June 2021 by Ruth and Jonah Arkema of Branchton. They removed thousands garlic mustard plants. Thisphysical removal ensures that the roots of each plant were removed, to make sure the plants could not regrow. One can expect some regrowth from seeds,but this work has substantially reduced the population.
The Branchton Village Land Trust is very thankful to the Region of Waterloo for the grant to help manage the Branchton Forest.