2021-Habitat Restoration @ Moon Pass

Start Date-End Date: 07/17/2021-07/18/2021 Land Manager Office: USFS - Rio Grande National Forest Land Manager Contact: David Tronquet Funding Partner: National Forest Foundation Programmatic Partner: Summary: Registration opens June 1. Spend a weekend pulling oxeye daisy at Moon Pass. Description: Read Before You Register! Need-to-Know Details: We greatly appreciate you volunteering your time and energy to care for Colorado's outdoor places during COVID-19. To help provide a fun and safe experience for all, there are a few temporary changes to be prepared for: You may sign up for one or all days of this project, though we encourage multi-day registration to limit the number of interactions and potential exposure. You may only register yourself. Every volunteer must sign our digital COVID-specific forms ahead of time to be able to attend. You must pack your own lunches. Please see below for more information on meals. You must bring work gloves. Please click here for our full packing list of required and recommended items. If you are fully vaccinated,you may work without a mask. If you are not yet fully vaccinated or if you prefer to wear a mask for any reason, please continue to wear a mask on VOC projects. We will have spare masks available if needed. Cancellation & Waitlists: Due to limited spots on this year's projects, we expect projects to fill quickly with waitlists. If you need to cancel, please email outreach@voc.org as soon as possible so we can free your spot for another volunteer and have a full workforce. If you are waitlisted for multiple projects, please call us at 303-715-1010 ext. 116 and we can help you find an open project, if available. Where You'll Be: Consisting of seven peaks in the quiet and scenic San Luis Valley, the La Garita Mountains are part of the San Juan Mountains and the Rio Grande National Forest. We'll be camped among creeks, spruce, and aspen near Moon Pass, a high mountain pass located at 10,571 feet above sea level. What You'll Do: Spend the weekend in the starry-skied San Luis Valley, where we will hike through forested slopes to remove oxeye daisy. While the area has been actively treated for this invasive weed since 2012, mostly with herbicide, volunteers will be hand-pulling the oxeye daisy as a non-chemical technique to mitigate the growth and spread of the plant. While this project is open to volunteers ages 14+, volunteers should be prepared for physically demanding work: some pulling and hiking will be along the roadside while some will be off-trail and require walking over downed trees and past some brush. Camping is available Friday and Saturday night; VOC's volunteer Crew Chefs will provide breakfast on Saturday and Sunday as well as dinner on Saturday night. Please note that 4WD vehicles or vehicles with high clearance are highly recommended. Volunteers without may have to caravan on old timber roads to work sites. Why It Matters: Oxeye daisy is a List B invasive noxious weed in Colorado, meaning we need to actively stop the spread of this species. Oxeye daisy out-competes native species that are nutritious for elk and other wildlife, while the daisy offers no nutrients. By removing oxeye daisy from the area, you will improve the health of native plant communities and wildlife. About Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) is the state's oldest, largest, and leading outdoor stewardship nonprofit organization. Founded in 1984 to motivate and enable people to become active stewards of Colorado's natural resources, VOC has engaged nearly 126,000 people in more than 1,000 volunteer projects for a donated labor value of $25 million. Through award-winning youth and volunteer programs, leadership training, capacity-building programs, and collaborative efforts with nonprofits and land management agencies, VOC is an invaluable resource in Colorado, especially as our outdoor stewardship needs are approaching near-crisis levels. For more information, visit www.voc.org or call 303-715-1010. Latitude/Longitude: 37.907985, -106.427466 Additional Information: We greatly appreciate you volunteering your time and energy to care for Colorado's outdoor places during COVID-19. To help provide a fun and safe experience for all, there are a few temporary changes to be prepared for: You must pack your own lunches.Please see below for more information on meals. You must bring work gloves.Pleaseclick herefor our full packing list of required and recommended items. If you are fully vaccinated,you may work without a mask. If you are not yet fully vaccinated or if you prefer to wear a mask for any reason, please continue to wear a mask on VOC projects. We will have spare masks available if needed. Campsites will be provided at the Poso Campground on the Rio Grande National Forest on both Friday and Saturday night (more information about amenities can be found at https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/riogrande/recarea/?recid=29404). You do not need to make a reservation. Please note that VOC doesnotprovide any camping equipment (tents, sleeping bags, etc.) but will providebreakfast on Saturday and Sunday as well as dinner on Saturday night. More information about camping will be sent via email approximately two weeks before the project. 4WD vehicles or vehicles with high clearance are highly recommended. Volunteers without may have to caravan on old timber roads to work sites. Camping Available: Yes Physical Difficulty: Difficult High Altitude Project: Yes Desired Number of Volunteers: 20 Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 34 Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 2 Total Volunteer Days: 32 Total Unique Volunteers: 19 Total Volunteer Hours: 354 Staff Hours: 48 Stipend Hours: 0 Project Summary: Spend the weekend in the starry-skied San Luis Valley, where we will hike through forested slopes to remove oxeye daisy. While the area has been actively treated for this invasive weed since 2012, mostly with herbicide, volunteers will be hand-pulling the oxeye daisy as a non-chemical technique to mitigate the growth and spread of the plant. Saguache RD closed down the Poso campground for the weekend so VOC could use it for the project. No water but 2 vault toilets and 10 sites (Site 1 was best for the camp kitchen) POSO CAMPGROND COORDIANTES: Latitude: 37.90800199 Longitude: -106.4273694 Elevation: 9,000 The group camped out at the RGNF campground and we had a 15 minute commute to the work site each morning. The land manager, Dave T., has managed this work for a few years so he knew the specific areas he wanted us to target and the best strategy to get the job done. We found that two groups seemed to form naturally among the volunteers which worked really well. Those that would sweep through first removing all the larger patches and more obvious plants (flowering) and then a group of more detail oriented volunteers who would slowly follow behind double checking areas and removing all the hard to spot rosettes. Since vehicles on the dirt road had spread most of the infestation we didn't have to go too far off the road in either direction to find it, making the work fairly easy. Being out in the hot sun all day was probably the most taxing part of the project work.In 2020 there were really dense area to eradicate, there seems to be less of that so we can cover a larger area but not necessarily remove as many bags to list in the accomplishments. We got about 80% of the work finished that we had set out to accomplish and Dave is planning on sending a conversation corps crew out to complete the rest. The outcome from the 2020 project proved to be very successful based on what we saw when we went back to check those areas. We are hoping for the same outcome and in 2022 we should be able to finish up the last round of mechanical removal. Dave is hopeful that we will be able to completely eradicate the oxeye daisy in the next few years. We will try and recruit additional volunteers for the 2022 project. Successes and Challenges: Successes: - Invasiveremoval work may not seem very exciting to some but the group of volunteers that attended the project were very enthusiasticabout the work. Many volunteering to come back next year to do the project again. - It was really encouraging to see how successfulthe previous project accomplishments were a year later. - Having Dave bring out the UTV to map the work area was very helpful in tracking accomplishments Challenges; - We would like to try and recruit more volunteers for the 2022 project. If we could split into two large groups to tackle differentareas we would be able to get a lot more done. Lessons Learned: n/a Special Notes: Stewardship Education: Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: Description of Accidents/Incidents: Incident report filed regarding Miller Hudson's medical issue on the project Description of Work Completed: