Brothers Chris and Mike Long spent a day at Green Earth's Brush Hill preserve in early December working to remove dangerous trees hanging over the trail, improve the trail footing, and remove invasive species. They brought two employees of their forestry company to cut and treat bush honeysuckle over most of the property as Chris and Mike tackled the chainsaw work. You can see information and pictures of this workay and other Green Earth improvement projects at Long Forestry's website. Thanks Chris & Mike for all you do for Green Earth!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Halloween Festivities and helped support Green Earth!

The Pumpkin Run was a wonderful success and we appreciate the hard work undertaken by organizers Lacey Gibson, Brook Patton, and Ellen Esling.

Pictures of the event and category winners are posted at pumpkinrun.grandavenue.cc

Green Earth opened our Pyles Fork Preserve to the public in late October. Nearly 100 supporters joined us for food, drinks, live music, and games for the kids. More pictures of this event can be seen in our Photo Gallery.

This wonderful morning was the culmination of months of hard work by dozens of volunteers. Photos of volunteer workdays can be seen in our Photo Gallery. The list of all the volunteers that helped is too large to post here, but we want to specifically thank a few groups and individuals who showed up time and again during the trail construction: SIUC Geography Club, SIUC Wildlife Society, Nathan Speagle, Russ Cerocke, Misty McEyla, Matios Kubbs, Lisa Thomas, and Jessica Lagona.

The 124 acre preserve currently has a 1.0 mile trail loop that winds through the woodland, to Pyles Fork Creek, then back to the trailhead at Attucks Park. If you want to visit this site, look for our preserve sign along the east tree line of Attucks Park, off of North Wall Street. A map of all of our site locations can be found on our Nature Preserves/Map page.

For two consecutive summers Green Earth has hosted international interns as part of the Paul Simon Public Policy's program of introducing foreign students to different aspects of American government and culture.  Part of this program includes learning about the American not-for-profit sector.  The Indonesian interns participating in the program visit several different types of not-for-profit organizations within the Carbondale area.

On a very warm day in mid-July, I met with seven of the interns at Green Earth's Chautauqua Bottoms Prairie to discuss why nature preserves are important for our local community.  The discussion turned to how Green Earth depends not only on financial support from the community, but also on the volunteer labor needed to manage a nature preserve.  After a short discussion the interns gathered up gear and followed me into the tall grass prairie for an afternoon of removing encroaching sapling trees.  

Even though working in the heat of the day was exhausting, the interns were especially cheerful and enthusiastic.  Several told me of living near, or visiting nature preserves in their own countries, and how much they appreciated having these.  Luckily the southern Illinois summer wasn't a match for the heat and humidity these interns are use to and a lot was accomplished that afternoon. 

I had a wonderful time getting to know our international volunteers.  I sincerely hope Green Earth is invited to continue to participatein this program for selfish reasons (so I can continue to work with such fun, dynamic,and enthusiastic students from so far away) and for altruistic reasons (if students from different cultures and backgrounds can see how much effort Americans are willing to invest in protecting our natural areas, maybe that lesson can be taken back to regions that may not necessarily regard undeveloped areas as precious). 

Our thanks to Misty McElyea or River to River Cooperative Weed Management Area for assisting in leading the volunteer work and to the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute for arranging this opportunity.  More photos of this workday are available in our photo gallery.

Stephanie Eichholz

Executive Director

Green Earth recently held a trail dedication to honor long time board member David Kenney. The Southern Illinosian covered the event: Kenney Honored With His Own Trail.

Find more articles about Green Earth on our News Article Page

Photo courtesy of The Southern Illinosian

On a beautiful spring morning in late March, co-teachers Ms. Jennifer Liss and Ms. Kristen Cassidy of Lewis School held a field trip for their 5th grade class at Green Earth's Chautauqua Bottoms.  This field trip was the culmination of a unit on native ecology and the threat exotic invasive species can pose to our natural areas.  

Twenty four students spent the morning doing more than just learning about managing our native landscape, they spent the morning doing something about it!  Under the direction of Chris Evans of the River to River Cooperative Weed Management Area, these students spent several hours hand-pulling the invading garlic mustard from along the trail.

Our thanks to this 5th grade class for their interest in protecting native habitat, and to the volunteers who helped during this field trip:  Katherine Poulos, Sara Eynon, Carolyn Ferdinand, Janel Taylor, Allie McCreary, and Stephanie Eichholz.

Visit the Photo Gallery to view more photos of this field trip.

Green Earth and Keep Carbondale Beautiful partnered for a huge site clean up on Green Earth's newest property, the Pyles Fork Preserve.  Nearly 60 volunteers pitched in for a 3-hour workday March 20th.  Over 2,000 lbs of trash was pulled from the preserve, with nearly half of it coming directly out of Pyles Fork Creek.  

 before . . .

                                                                                                                                   . . . after

Visit our Photo Gallery to see more pictures of this clean up.

Thanks to 38 hard working volunteers, and the trail-design expertise of Dr. Logan Park, Brush Hill's Herbie Beyler Trail saw major improvements during a recent workday (February 27, 2010).  

Significant portions of the trail were re-routed away from erosion-prone placements, and sections of the trail left in place had water control features built into the existing footpath.  The result is a footpath that should stay dryer after rain events and suffer much less erosion.  

Thanks to all our volunteers for all their hard work!  Visit the Photo Gallery to see photos of this workdays. 

Dangerous treefalls associated with the 'Inland Hurricane' or 'derecho' (see weather map below) that hit Jackson County May 8, 2009, meant we were forced to close all trails on GE properties. 

But thanks to the hard work of a number of volunteers, all trails are now once again open for public use.  Well done all!.