Update on Invasives Removal at South side of BSP

[Charlie McCabe]

I wanted to follow-up and report that the Austin Parks Foundation
hosted the first of what will be many workdays to begin removing
ligustrum and nandina from the south side of the pool outside the
fence. We had 30 or so St. Edward's students and some great girl
scouts work with us for about 2.5 hours on Saturday and we removed -
using our weedwrenches, picks and shovels about 500-600 smaller
ligustrum and nandina. We built several temporary windrows with the
removed trees and plants. All volunteers did a great job.

We'll be hosting several more workdays, another student group from ACC
will be out on Thu, Apr 21st, then two "anyone can volunteer" workdays
on Saturday, April 23rd and Saturday, April 30th from 9 am to noon.
Our focus at this point to remove and place into windrows all of the
smaller ligustrum and nandina in the area. We'll then re-assess our
plans to begin removing some of the larger trees, working with our
volunteer friends and partners as well as the parks dept. We'll
continue to tread carefully in order to preserve some of the great
grasses and understory plants that are popping up where sunlight can
break through the dense ligustrum canopy. Our goal is to increase the
sunlight coming through and allow more native plants to sprout.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me
directly. And if you haven't learned to use a weed wrench yet, I'll be
pleased to show you how on April 23rd or 30th!

Charlie McCabe
Austin Parks Foundation