Gregory+Niguidula+-+Describing+Events

Invasive species eradication efforts require a lot of man power, much of which can come from local volunteers. In my hometown, for example, my Eagle Scout project involved removing English ivy from an infested wood. The local Land Conservation Trust had recently acquired the land from the nearby golf course, which had been using it as a dump site for the landscaping waste. In the months leading up to the project, I recruited volunteers from a variety of sources including my high school’s environmental club, my sister’s CCD group, friends, and members of my boy scout troop. The work itself was relatively simple. English ivy is a vine, sometimes used for decoration, that grows extremely quickly, creeping along the ground and covering trees. The roots, however, are not deep so the vines can be ripped up quite easily The project was on a Saturday morning in the Spring of 2010. More than twenty people showed up to help. From about 8:00 to 1:00 we ripped up the vines, bagged them, and brought them to the curb. Now while everyone was doing the same work, the motivations for doing so varied widely. A few were there purely for the sake of protecting the environment. I would say that these people were in the minority. Some were there simply because they were friends of mine. The rest were there, partially for the above reasons, but they were after other things as well. The CCD group required community service hours in order to get confirmed and the other scouts needed hours in order to move up in rank. This is not to say that anyone there was being selfish in helping. Quite the opposite, I believe. However, it does go to show that in invasive species management projects the motivations for assisting are not always ideologically or scientifically based, but often stem from other things.