Dominated Honeysuckle

There is a big park in a small city that brings the locals together. Castlewood State Park, a very popular park for west St. Louis county, is experiencing the Honeysuckle effect. Most say to leave this invasive plant, that it cannot be managed or destroyed. I say otherwise.

To really be effective in what we do as Americorps Members and all of the other conservation and preservationists, we absolutely must give back and show all of the information and knowledge that we gather. It is not our knowledge alone, every single person has a right to it. And so, in an effort to make a difference I have chosen to clear out one rather large section of Honeysuckle in the front of Castlewood State Park. I must say it was a HUGE undertaking at first, but by sticking with it and consistently going out there and removing the Honeysuckle, the section is now perfectly cleared of it. It looks as parklands should look.

Just by being out there, I've had numerous park lovers ask me why I am cutting down the green stuff. And so I go off into my rant about why it's bad and how we are destroying it. By the end of this project people will be able to look to their right and see a Honeysuckle laden forest, and to their left and clear woodland.

My interest in this park started when I chose Keifer Creek as my number one water quality monitoring site, close to a year and a half ago. Keifer Creek has now become of interest to many people and I have made it a long term goal to do everthing for this park and this creek that I can. There will be a Keifer Creek monitoring day where we perform water quality monitoring on all of the sites from the start of Keifer Creek all the way to the Meremac. I am excited to be apart of bettering an area that people can really see the difference and learn something new.