Meet the Volunteers Who Steward Our Preserves
Hands on the Land is our series spotlighting the dedicated volunteers who give their time and energy to caring for our natural spaces. Throughout the series, we’ll introduce you to a land steward who plays a vital role in maintaining the preserves we all enjoy.
This month’s spotlight is on Alex Woods, a passionate volunteer with the Middlesex Land Trust. Inspired by a love of trees and a growing awareness of invasive species, Alex has spent countless hours cutting vines, restoring trails, and watching native plants return. Read on to discover what motivates Alex’s stewardship and why even small actions can make a lasting impact.
Q: What inspired you to become a volunteer land steward, and what do you enjoy most about it?
“The initial catalyst for me was reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. I thought I loved the woods before, but it showed me how little I knew and how much deeper that connection can go. Improving my ability to identify trees and shrubs has been like putting on glasses for the first time. The blur of green of the forest is clarifying into a community of unique individuals, and now that I know who’s there, I can start to appreciate their particular characteristics: the candelabra-like crown of a tuliptree, the sinewed contours of a hornbeam, the deep blocky bark of a chestnut oak, the thrill of spotting a small American chestnut that’s still holding on a century after the blight took hold.
“The downside to sharpening my vision is that now I can see all the plants that don’t belong here–non-native invasive species– and are crowding out or actively killing the native plants. One crucial moment early on was when I was walking at Hurd State Park and consulted Google to identify a boa constrictor-like vine that was twining around a nearby tree. As I read about Asian bittersweet, I can’t describe the crescendo of horror as I realized that hundreds of trees were being strangled right in front of my eyes.
“I wanted to help, and the Middlesex Land Trust was kind enough to welcome me as a volunteer. I began combing the Palmer Taylor Preserve for bittersweet vines, which I cut with a folding handsaw. There are no predators or defense mechanisms to stop the spread of Asian bittersweet, so a tree will mutely suffer the increasing weight and overtopping canopy of a vine for 30, 40, or 50 years until it dies of starvation from the lack of sunlight or breaks in half from the high tension and weight of a large vine. It all seems inevitable, but with three minutes and a little effort, I can eliminate that bleak future and allow the recovery process to begin. The blanket of leaves will shrivel and decay, the sap will drain from the vine, and its shoddy wood will eventually fall apart under its own weight. This tiny action, performed on permanently protected land, might extend the lifespan of a white oak by a century or more (some have lived to be 500) and feed generations of squirrels and other critters. For someone who loves trees, it’s a staggering return on investment.
“It’s also given me a chance to see first hand the resilience of our native plants, both individually as they shake off the effects of the vines but also in the communal seed bank. In the spring following a project to dig up a plantation of entrenched Japanese barberry, the forest floor erupted in a profusion of sugar maple seedlings. Yet, before we started digging, it had looked like a lost cause, too far gone to ever recover. Our native plants have a tremendous amount of fight, but they need us to put a green thumb on the scale to balance out the inherent advantages of the invasives that we mistakenly introduced. It’s no longer an option to ask forests to simply take care of themselves: they need our efforts to neutralize these threats.”
Q: Can you share a favorite experience or accomplishment during your time as a steward?
“The 14-acre section of the Palmer Taylor Preserve around the red barn was in particularly rough shape when I started. It was a mess of Japanese barberry, up to 7 feet in height, with a generous dose of multiflora rose, burning bush, privet, and Asian bittersweet. The barberry was so dense and was growing so quickly that the barn loop trail could no longer be maintained, and it was officially closed. With the help and support of other volunteers, we’ve cut back the invasives on over 11 acres. There is still much to be done to keep the invasives at bay, but the trail has been reopened to the public, and there are signs of recovery for the native plants. Spice bush, bladdernut, sugar maples, sassafras, Christmas fern, sensitive fern, and others are establishing footholds, where previously there was only barberry. Seeing the transformation that we were able to achieve in just a few years makes me much more hopeful for the future of not just our other preserves but our native ecosystems as a whole.”
Q: What are some of the tasks you regularly perform to help care for the preserves?
“I cut shrubby invasives with my battery-powered brush cutter, maintain trails, and pick up trash. I haven’t tracked how many bags I’ve filled with garbage, but I pulled over 200 pounds of trash out of a brook on the Palmer Taylor Preserve, and I filled a couple wheelbarrows with barbed wire from the barn preserve last year. These problems are big, but they’re not infinite. We just have to keep chipping away at them a little at a time.”
Q: Why do you believe land conservation and stewardship are important for the community and the environment?
“I’d rather live next to an acre of forest than an acre of parking for a box store, but a forest can’t articulate an economic argument to justify its existence. Even as a producer of sawlogs, the profit from a working forest will pale in comparison to developing the land for industry or buildings.
“Unfragmented blocks of forest support more biodiversity, produce more mast, feed a greater volume of creatures, filter and circulate more water, sequester more carbon, and show greater resilience when faced with disease, unusual weather patterns, and encroaching invasive species. They provide a wider variety of structures, creating richer soils and providing more niches that foster a richer assembly of species, which, though valuable in itself, also adds overlapping layers of ecosystem services that permit the whole to withstand, and then heal from, an adverse event. In a complex, native forest, different species will have different tolerances for cold, heat, drought, shade, wind, fire, and the variety of often host-specific pathogens that might be introduced.
“To reap these benefits, we will need at least some of our forests to be protected for the long term. Three-quarters of Connecticut’s forested land area is privately owned, meaning most of the greenery we see has no enduring protection. It could be here today and stumps tomorrow. Invasive species are particularly successful in full sun and edge habitats, so the fragmentation of forest blocks increases the likelihood of an infestation. Instead, turning to land conservation can give communities the opportunity to preserve the places and landscapes they cherish. Like anything else, this requires time and money, but forests embody a peace and serenity that I can find nowhere else. And we could all use a little more of that.”
Q: What advice would you give to someone interested in getting involved or reducing their environmental impact?
“We live in hectic times, so I would say to start as small as possible in order to start as soon as possible. Even the littlest actions will add up through repetition, and doing something is infinitely preferable to doing nothing. Get to know the plants in your yard, your local park, or around your school. Be curious about what’s been hidden in plain sight. Is there room to expand your garden or add a couple natives? If you’re going for a walk, tuck a bag and a gardening glove in your pocket in case you notice some trash to pick up. It feels good to see a problem and address it, even if it’s small.
“Unfortunately, some of the problems that we hear about on the news are so big that it throws off our sense of scale and makes everything local seem insignificant. It’s important to know what’s happening nationally and globally, but being repeatedly dwarfed in this way can make us feel powerless and paralyzed. I think this has contributed to a kind of fatalism, popular in my generation, that the world is ending and everything is doomed. It may sound hyperbolic or nihilistic, but in reality it’s neither: it’s despair acting as a shield against the pain of grief. To keep believing that our small improvements are worthwhile, we have to acknowledge and process the sorrow we feel for what we’ve lost or are in the process of losing without wallowing in it or letting it trigger a pessimism that only excuses inaction. This isn’t easy, and I wish it wasn’t necessary to become practiced in this art, but it’s essential to find a healthy way to deal with setbacks, disappointment, and the perpetual background hum of negative headlines.
“With all that’s happening, it’s increasingly clear that we can’t wait for a transformative leader or a spectacular innovation to save the world, so we just have to save whatever part we can. Macro changes are still necessary, but even if those arrive, I wouldn’t expect that to include a senator coming over to care for the creatures living in my yard. If it’s anyone’s responsibility, it’s mine, and it still matters.
“When I consider the spiders, stink bugs, and lady beetles that get into my living space (despite my best efforts to keep them out), it’s obvious just how much life is right beyond my door. Nature, therefore, is not something that happens “over there.” It’s all around us, sometimes uncomfortably close, and those creatures will adore every little improvement we make to our surroundings. Native plants—unlike most exotic ornamentals—support native creatures, so even a potted native on an apartment balcony will be found and appreciated by our intrepid pollinators. But for those who crave a bigger impact, the Middlesex Land Trust has 1,400 acres of land and not nearly enough hands.
“Hope and optimism are hard. But, as a wise hobbit said, “There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”