Tree Planting at the Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge

For weeks and weeks, we planned and recruited volunteers for our first tree planting of the year. It was to be an epic day: we would meet bright and early at the US Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) Office in Columbia, carpool down to the Cranberry Bend Unit of the Big Muddy Refuge and spend the day planting 600 tree seedlings from the Missouri Department of Conservation. It was going to work beautifully…but of course the weather failed to get the memo. Saturday, March 13 was cold, rainy and miserable. Refuge staff quickly called off the event, not only to protect the warmth and happiness of volunteers but also to avoid the flooded, muddy mess that was our planting site.

Thus we began a race against time! Tree seedlings (like most plants) do not like being out of the ground for very long. We had to pick a new date, find some helping hands and get back out to the refuge! We did so on Monday, March 22. Sarah Pennington-our lone volunteer- and 4 USFWS employees joined Julia and I for a busy day of planting!

The USFWS provided two vehicles (three if you count the “gator” we hauled out there) as well as all the equipment we would need. The area they had staked out for us used to be a corn field just near the Missouri River. The land is now owned by the refuge, but it needs a lot of love before it looks like anything but a corn field! We spread out in a corner of the field, and got to work!

The lesson we learned that day was that tree planting is hard work! Although the ground was nice and soft from the recent rain, it couldn’t change the fact we were digging into Missouri clay. We were down to our t-shirts in no time as we labored to get the bur oaks, elderberries, wild plums, swamp white oaks and many others into the ground.

In just around 3 hours, we had gotten all of our little trees into the ground! Although the event didn’t go quite as planned, we had a great time, and in a decade (or two) the field should be starting to look at bit more natural!